sity  of  California 
them  Regional 
brary  Facility 


RECOLLECTIONS 


ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY 

LATE  DEAN  OF  WESTMINSTER 

Qfym  3Lecture0 

DELIVERED  IN  EDINBURGH  IN  NOVEMBER  1882 
BY 

GEORGE  GRANVILLE  BRADLEY  D.D. 

DEAN  OF   WESTMINSTER 
HONORARY  FELLOW  OP   UNIVERSITY   COLLEGE    OXFORD 


NEW  YORK 
CHAELES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 

1883 

UNIY.  Iff  CALIF.  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 


INTRODUCTION. 


THE  following  pages  are  the  result  of  an 
attempt  to  comply  with  a  request  made  on  behalf 
of  the  Philosophical  Institution  of  Edinburgh. 
The  Directors  did  me  the  honour  of  expressing  a 
wish  that  I  should  open  their  winter  session  by 
delivering  two  lectures  on  my  much  lamented 
friend  and  predecessor,  the  late  Dean  of  West- 
minster. I  could  not  refuse  to  avail  myself  of 
such  an  opportunity  for  placing  on  record  my 
recollections  of  one  to  whose  intimacy  I  had  been 
admitted  in  early  youth,  and  whose  friendship  I 
had  been  privileged  to  enjoy  for  more  than  forty 
years.  I  felt  it,  however,  due  alike  to  the 
memory  of  my  friend,  and  to  the  legitimate 
claims  of  those  whom  I  was  to  address,  to  bring 
before  them  something  more  than  mere  personal 
reminiscences  of  one  who  had  filled  so  large  a 
space  in  the  literary  and  theological  history  of 
the  whole  period  during  which  I  had  known 


yi  INTRODUCTION. 


him.  I  thought  it  right,  therefore,  to  prepare 
myself  for  the  task  by  a  careful  re-perusal  of  his 
published  works,  especially  of  the  numerous  lec- 
tures, pamphlets,  articles,  essays,  and  occasional 
sermons  which,  even  more  markedly  than  his 
longer  and  more  elaborate  works,  bear  the  true 
impress  of  his  mind  and  character.  Not  a  few  of 
these  which  had  escaped  my  memory  or  notice 
were  placed  at  my  disposal  by  various  friends ; 
and  in  addition  to  all  that  I  had  preserved  of 
my  own  correspondence,  I  was  permitted  to  avail 
myself  of  letters,  and  notes  of  personal  recollec- 
tions, entrusted  to  me  by  the  kindness  of  some 
who  had  been  bound  to  him  by  the  closest  ties  of 
enduring  friendship.  It  soon  became  apparent 
that  the  materials  placed  in  my  hands,  though 
insignificant  in  comparison  with  those  which  were 
being  gradually  collected  with  a  view  to  more 
detailed  memoirs,  could  scarcely  be  adequately 
dealt  with  in  the  compass  of  two  evening  lec- 
tures, even  before  so  kind  and  forbearing  an 
audience  as  I  was  prepared  to  find  in  the  city  of 
Edinburgh.  Arrangements  were  very  kindly 
made  for  the  delivery  of  a  third  lecture  —  let  me 
thank  my  friends  there  for  its  cordial  reception 
—  at  Fettes  College ;  and  thus  with  some  neces- 
sary curtailment  the  greater  portion  of  the  fol- 


INTRODUCTION.  vii 


lowing  pages  was  spoken  as  printed.  I  have  not 
thought  it  necessary  to  indicate  the  paragraphs 
which,  out  of  consideration  for  the  time  and 
patience  of  singularly  attentive  and  sympathetic 
listeners,  were  omitted  in  the  actual  delivery  of 
the  lectures.  As,  however,  the  greater  portion 
of  the  matter  devoted  to  Dean  Stanley's  earlier 
life,  at  Alderley,  Rugby,  and  Oxford,  formed  the 
subject  not  of  the  first  but  of  the  second  lecture, 
that  which  was  given  at  Fettes  College,  I  have 
thought  it  better  to  arrange  what  is  now  printed 
in  three  consecutive  chapters.  I  have  thus  pre- 
served the  order  in  which  all  that  I  had  prepared 
was  actually  written,  as  well  as  that  which  will 
be  most  convenient  to  the  general  reader.  But 
I  have  retained  throughout  the  form,  and,  with 
a  few  necessary  corrections,  the  actual  words  of 
the  lectures  as  actually  delivered.  They  were 
delivered,  it  will  be  remembered,  in  Scotland, 
and  before  a  Scottish  audience ;  and  I  therefore 
felt  myself  warranted  in  dwelling  with  a  not 
unreasonable  emphasis  on  the  singularly  close 
ties  which  united  him  of  whom  I  spoke  to  the 
sympathies  and  affections  of  those  whom  I  was 
addressing. 

I  need  hardly  add  that  the  subject  on  which  I 
spoke  was  one  of  exceeding  interest  to  myself. 


viii  INTE  OD  UCTION. 


Those  who  are  at  the  pains  of  glancing  at  the 
following  pages  will  see  that  I  disclaimed  from 
the  very  first  any  attempt  to  speak  of  Arthur 
Stanley  otherwise  than  as  a  deeply  attached  and 
grateful  friend,  and  as  one  who  largely  sympa- 
thised with  his  views.  Had  I  not  done  so  I 
should  have  written  differently,  or  not  at  all.  I 
trust,  however,  that  I  have  not  allowed  my  warm 
affection  for  one  who  was,  for  many  years  of  his 
life,  engaged  in  almost  ceaseless  controversies,  to 
cause  me  to  give  needless  pain  to  those  wrhose 
difference  of  views  on  some  most  important  sub- 
jects made  them  unable  to  share  the  feelings 
with  which  he  was  regarded  by  those  who  were 
more  or  less  in  sympathy  with  him.  I  should 
regret  any  want  of  fairness  on  my  own  part  as 
in  itself  blamable.  I  should  regret  it  the  more, 
as  some  of  those  who  were  necessarily  brought 
in  the  course  of  many  controversies  into  the 
most  direct  collision  with  my  dear  friend,  have 
spoken  with  generous  warmth  and  tenderness  of 
one,  the  beauty  of  whose  character  they  could 
recognise  without  undervaluing  their  disagree- 
ment with  his  opinions,  sentiments,  or  language. 
I  feel,  however,  that  in  saying  even  this,  I 
am  attaching  an  undue  importance  to  the  pub- 
lication of  what  can  have  no  claim  to  more 


INTR  OD  UCTION.  ix 


than  a  passing  and  fugitive  interest.  Nothing 
could  be  further  from  my  purpose  than  to  offer 
this  most  imperfect  sketch  as  in  any  way  a  sub- 
stitute for,  or  even  an  instalment  of,  a  biography 
of  Arthur  Stanley.  Great  as  was  the  kindness 
of  his  literary  executors  and  personal  friends, 
it  was  impossible  for  me  to  avail  myself  of  more 
than  a  small  fraction  of  the  documents  and 
papers  which,  owing  to  his  own  habits  and  the 
prescient  care  of  so  many  to  whom  he  was  dear, 
are  assuming  proportions  of  almost  unexampled 
abundance.  Yet  I  venture  to  hope  that  the 
publication  even  of  the  short  summary  of  his 
life  and  work  which  is  comprised  in  these  three 
chapters,  may  be  not  unwelcome  to  some  at 
least  among  the  many  who,  beyond  the  limits  of 
those  to  whom  they  were  directly  addressed,  had 
yet  felt  the  spell  of  his  character,  or  had  been 
attracted  or  instructed  by  his  writings. 

I  may  conclude  with  a  warm  expression  of 
my  gratitude  to  those  of  his  friends  who  have 
kindly  allowed  me  the  use  in  some  cases  of  their 
own  correspondence,  in  others  of  their  notes  of 
personal  reminiscences.  I  ought  especially  to 
name  Dr.  Greenhill,  Professor  Max  Mliller,  Rev. 
W.  B.  Philpot,  Rev.  H.  H.  Montgomery,  Mr. 
Victor  Williamson,  and  Mr.  John  Hodgkin ; 


INTRODUCTION. 


above  all  my  thanks  are  due  to  his  two  surviv- 
ing literary  executors,  Mr.  Theodore  Walrond 
and  Mr.  George  Grove,  not  only  for  their  ready 
acquiescence  in  the  present  publication,  but  for 
the  invaluable  assistance  which  in  various  forms 
I  received  from  each  of  them. 


DEANERY,  WESTMINSTEB, 
December  31,  1882. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

(From  his  birth  in  1815  to  1840.) 

4 

ALDERLEY  —  RUGBY  —  OXFORD. 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION  —  Seven  distinct  stages  in  Arthur  Stanley's  life 

—  Limited  aim  of  these  Lectures 1 

Special  ties  to  Scotland 4 

Date  and  place  of  Arthur  Stanley's  birth  (1815)    ....  9 

The  Stanley  family 10 

Alderley  :  Mr.  Hare's  description 11 

His  father,  Edward  Stanley,  Rector  of  Alderley      ...  12 

—         Bishop  of  Norwich 13 

His  mother 16 

Brothers  and  sisters 17 

Clerical  homes 18 

CHILDHOOD  OF  ARTHUR  STANLEY  —  School  at  Seaforth     .       .  18 

Early  poems 20 

Tour  in  the  South  of  France,  1828  —  his  journal   ....  21 

ENTERS  RUGBY  SCHOOL,  1829  — early  life  at  Rugby         .        .  22 

Letters  to  his  former  schoolmaster  —  impressions  of  Dr.  Arnold  25 

Life  as  a  Rugby  School  boy 27 

The  poet  Gray  and  Mr.  Gladstone 31 

Election  as  scholar  of  Balliol  (1833) 31 

Exhibitioner  of  Rugby  School  (1834) 32 

Parting  with  Dr.  Arnold 33 

Visit  to  the  English  lakes 34 

A  glance  forwards  to  Arnold's  death  in  1842     ....  36 

Truthfulness  of  Stanley's  picture  of  Arnold         ....  35 

"What  was  the  effect  of  Arnold  on  himself  ?  36 

xi 


xii  CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

LIFE  AS  AN  OXFOKD  UNDERGRADUATE  :  prize  poem,  "  The 

Gipsies " 40 

Elected  to  a  Fellowship  at  University  College,  ordained  (1839)  44 

Family  history  :  removal  to  Norwich  (1837)  ;  return  of  his  eld- 
est brother  from  the  Arctic  expedition  ....  46 

A  personal  reminiscence 47 


CHAPTER   II. 

(From  1840  to  1863.) 
OXFORD  —  CANTERBURY  —  OXFORD. 
FELLOW  OF  UNIVERSITY  COLLEGE,  OXFORD,  1840-50. 

Tour  in  Greece,  1840-41 49 

Remarks  on  the  spirit  in  which  he  studied  nature    ...  50 

Scenery  always  subordinate  to  historical  or  other  associations  .  51 

His  intense  interest  in  such  associations 52 

His  remarks  on  the  effect  of  the  first  visit  to  places  of  interest  .  54 

His  meeting  with  Hugh  Pearson  at  Naples       ....  54 
Return  to  Oxford,  1841,  and  life  as  College  tutor  .        .        .        .55 

College  life  at  Oxford 56 

Effect  of  his  lectures  on  History  and  Divinity      ....  57 

His  intercourse  with  undergraduates 58 

Literary  and  other  work 60 

Influence  over  the  young 61 

Secretary  to  the  first  Oxford  Commission 62 

Public  events  :  Sir  Robert  Peel  —  the  year  1848         ...  63 

Position  towards  Church  parties 64 

Removal  from  Oxford  to  Canterbury  (1851)        ....  67 
Retrospect  of  family  history  :  death  of  his  father  and  two 

brothers  (1849-50) 67 

CANON  OF  CANTERBURY,  1851-1858. 

Advice  given  by  Thomas  Carlyle 69 

Value  to  him  of  his  life  at  Canterbury 69 

Memorials  of  Canterbury 71 

Travels  in  the  East :  Sinai  and  Palestine  .  71 


CONTENTS.  xiii 


PAOB 

Tour  in  Russia    .  74 

Home  and  social  life  at  Canterbury 75 

Family  and  public  events  :  examining  Chaplain  to  the  Bishop 

of  London  (Dr.  Tait)  1856 76 

LIFE  AT  OXFORD  AS  BEGIUS  PROFESSOR  OF  ECCLESIASTICAL 
HISTORY,  185&-1863. 

Appointed  Professor 77 

Inaugural  and  other  lectures 78 

Relation  towards  undergraduates .82 

Social  life  at  Oxford 83 

Controversies  —  Greek  Professorship  ;  "  Essays  and  Reviews  "  .  84 
Second  visit  to  Egypt  and  Palestine  with  the  Prince  of  Wales  ; 

sermons  on  the  East  ;  his  mother's  death  (1862)    ...  86 

Return  to  England  —  Death  of  General  Bruce  .        ...  89 

Theological  controversies  at  Oxford  and  elsewhere     ...  91 

Letter  to  Bishop  of  London  on  terms  of  subscription      .       .  91 


CHAPTER  in. 

(From  1863  to  1881.) 
WESTMINSTER. 

Marriage 94 

Farewell  Sermon  at  Oxford 94 

Feelings  with  which  his  appointment  was  regarded    ...  96 

Manifold  aspects  of  his  life  as  Dean 97 

I.  Married  Life  —  Lady  Augusta  Stanley        ....  99 

II.  Social  Life 100 

III.  Controversial  Life :  Vestment  and  other  controversies  ; 
Athanasian  Creed  ;  Convocation  ;  hostility  which  he 
provoked  —  attempt  to  exclude  him  from  the  Univer- 
sity pulpit 102 

Defence  of  the  Bishop  of  Natal  —  three  occasions    .        .  107 
IV.  Official  Life  as  Dean :  Memorials  of  Westminster  ;  monu- 
ments ;  Chapter-house 110 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

V.  Sermons 113 

VI.  Theological  position. 

Dislike  to  party  ties  — Liberal  theology  .        .       .        .  115 
Quotation  from  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  ;  Rev.  "W.  R. 

"W.  Stephens  ;  his  favourite  topics        ....  116 
Stress  laid  on  the  spiritual  and  moral  elements  of  Chris- 
tianity          118 

Hopes  and  fears  for  the  future 119 

His  attitude  towards  Science 120 

towards  other  Denominations  and  Churches  121 

John  Wesley  ;  Zwinglius  ;  Baxter 123 

Impression  made  on  different  minds  by  his  teaching        .  124 
Vn.  His  Sympathy  with  the  Working  Classes :  their  feelings 

towards  him 125 

VJL1I.  His  Personal  and  Domestic  Life 130 

Lady  Augusta  Stanley's  illness  —  her  death  in  1875       .        .  132 

His  life  as  a  widower  ;  visit  to  America  (1878)    .       .        .  135 

Reminiscences  of  his  closing  days 136 

Literary  activity  ;  sermons  ;  his  sister's  death  .       .       .  137 

Proposed  monument  to  the  Prince  Imperial  ....  138 

Illness  and  death 140 


RECOLLECTIONS 


ARTHUR   PENRHYN   STANLEY 


KECOLLECTIONS 


ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY. 

CHAPTER  I. 

(From  his  Birth  in  1815  to  1840.) 
ALDERLEY  —  RUGBY  —  OXFORD. 

"T7~OUR  directors  have  called  on  me  to  undertake  a 
•*-  very  interesting,  but  by  no  means  an  easy  task. 
Some  months  have  passed  since  they  requested  me  to 
speak  to  you  here  of  one  whose  face  and  voice  will 
long  be  remembered  among  you,  my  own  dear  friend 
—  may  I  not  say  yours  also  ? — the  late  Dean  of  West- 
minster. Flattering  as  I  felt  their  proposal  to  be,  I 
shrank  with  unfeigned  reluctance  from  accepting  it. 
Iii  default  of  leisure,  and  in  the  absence,  the  compara- 
tive absence,  of  necessary  materials  and  documents,  I 
despaired  of  doing  any  adequate  justice  to  his  mem- 
ory, or  of  satisfying  the  claims  which  a  Philosophical 
Society  in  —  I  use  his  own  words  —  "  this  great  and 
historic  centre  of  Scottish  life,"  might  justly  make  in 
behalf  of  one  of  such  rare  and  surpassing  gifts,  whose 
life  was  so  closely  bound  up  with  the  religious  and 
literary  history  of  the  last  forty  years.  But  I  was 


2  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  i. 

encouraged  to  believe  that  I  might  look  for  a  sympa- 
thetic and  forbearing  audience ;  and  I  was  given  to 
understand  that  there  was  a  general  wish  that  he  who 
should  attempt  to  recall  him  to  you  should  be  none 
other  than  his  successor  in  the  post  to  which  his  own 
genius  had  added  so  much  exceptional  significance. 
To  that  wish  I  deferred,  and  am  here  to-day  to  fulfil 
my  engagement,  or  to  attempt  to  do  so  to  the  utmost 
of  my  powers. 

Let  me  say  at  once  that  I  would  gladly  have 
brought  before  you  a  sketch  of  each  of  what  I  may 
venture  to  call  the  seven  distinct  and  marked  stages 
of  his  life.  They  are,  first,  his  childhood  in  his  home 
at  Alderley;  next,  his  boyhood  at  Rugby,  where 
he  grew  up  under  the  influence  of  his  great  teacher, 
Dr.  Arnold.  Then  follows  his  brilliant  career  as  a 
scholar  of  Balliol.  Then,  fourthly,  the  many  impor- 
tant years  that  he  passed  as  a  resident  Member 
of  the  University  of  Oxford,  and  as  an  active  and 
influential  Tutor,  no  longer  of  Balliol,  but  of  Univer- 
sity College.  After  this  come  the  seven  quiet  years 
of  his  Canonry  at  Canterbury ;  then  his  work  as 
Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  History  at  Oxford ;  and, 
finally,  the  closing  and  culminating  stage  of  all,  his 
life  and  death  as  Dean  of  Westminster. 

It  would,  however,  be  obviously  impossible  to  bring 
before  you  in  any  detail  all  these  chapters  in  his  life, 
though  each  has  a  peculiar  character  and  a  special 
interest  of  its  own.  Nor  can  anything  be  more 
remote  from  my  present  purpose  than  any  attempt 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY. 

to  forestall  his  future  biographer ;  and  I  shall  pass 
over  without  notice  many  of  the  most  important 
passages  in  his  career,  only  attempting  any  fulness 
of  detail,  where  my  own  recollections,  or  the  special 
circumstances  of  those  whom  I  address,  or  other 
sufficient  reasons,  guide  me  to  do  so.  If  I  have  made 
a  wrong  choice  in  my  selection,  you  will  forgive  me. 
I  must  take  comfort  in  the  hope  that  you  have  come 
here  not  so  much  to  criticise  the  literary  merits  or 
the  judgment  of  your  Lecturer,  as  to  renew  your 
acquaintance  with  his  friend. 

To  that  friend  I  stand  too  near  in  affection  —  I  am 
bound  to  him  too  closely  by  enduring  ties  of  sympathy 
and  gratitude  —  to  play  the  part  of  a  censor  or  a 
critic.  I  cannot  stand  aside,  and  look  at  him,  or  speak 
of  him,  as  a  stranger  would.  This  you  will  not  expect 
or  wish.  But  I  can  promise  that  I  will  not  willingly 
misrepresent  him  by  a  hair's  breadth,  or  paint  him  for 
one  moment  other  than  he  was ;  other  than  I  have 
known  him  in  constant  intercourse  since  I  won  his 
friendship  as  I  passed  from  boyhood.  In  life  "he 
feared  no  man's  rebuke  ;  "  and  we,  his  friends  —  I,  for 
one  —  feel  no  need  to  speak  of  him  with  bated  breath, 
or  in  apologetic  accents.  I  will  simply  try  to  do  in 
short  compass  what  his  biographer  will  do,  we  all 
trust,  on  a  larger  scale ;  to  set  before  you  Arthur 
Stanley  as  he  lived  and  as  he  died ;  himself,  and  no 
other  —  his  real  character,  his  real  self;  and,  if  I 
venture,  to  add  something  as  to  his  views  on  the  most 
important  of  all  subjects,  I  will  leave  him,  so  far  as 


4  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  i. 

possible,  to  speak  for  himself.  Great  as  was  his  con- 
sideration for  others,  unbounded  as  was  his  tolerance, 
large  and  tender  as  were  his  sympathies,  there  never 
breathed  a  more  outspoken,  a  more  fearless  soul,  or  a 
more  transparent  expounder  of  all  that  lay  next  his 
heart. 

And  I  assure  myself  that  I  may  do  this  with  an 
especial  trustfulness  before  a  Scottish  audience.  You 
knew  the  man,  and  he  you.  Nowhere  did  he  more 
-freely  open  all  the  secrets  of  that  seething  brain,  and 
that  ardent  temperament  —  that  perfervidum  inge- 
nium  which  is  no  monopoly  of  the  countr}*men  of 
Buchanan.  To  Scotsmen  here,  to  Scotsmen  at  St. 
Andrews,  he  spoke  in  his  later  years  with  a  fulness 
of  confidence  not  exceeded  in  his  letters  to  his  dearest 
friends,  or  by  all  that  he  uttered  when  his  soul  was 
stirred  within  him  by  that  long  delayed  visit  to  the  new 
England  beyond  the  seas.  Reared  and  educated  in 
England,  he  was  unknown  arrong  you  till  some  few 
years  after  the  publication  of  his  "  Life  of  Arnold  "  had 
lifted  his  name  above  the  level  of  a  merely  academical 
reputation.  I  have  mislaid,  alas !  but  I  well  remember, 
the  letter  in  which,  34  years  ago,  on  his  first  visit 
to  the  Scottish  home  of  Principal  Shairp,  the  present 
Professor  of  Poetry  in  my  own  University,  with  the 
recollection  of  his  winter  in  Greece  still  unfaded  in  his 
memory,  he  spoke  of  Edinburgh  as  an  Athens — as 
(forgive  me  the  quotation)  a  "  coarser  Athens  " — and 
described  the  kindness  with  which  he  was  everywhere 
received  as  the  Biographer  of  Arnold,  the  interest 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  5 

evinced  in  one  in  whom  Scotsmen  saw,  and  the  words 
on  his  lips  had  a  deep  significance,  Elisha  the  son  of 
tShaphat,  who  poured  water  on  the  hands  of  Elijah. 
A  year  passed,  and  he  came  to  Scotland  on  a  sadder 
errand  —  to  close  his  father's  eyes;  even  as,  twice 
later,  he  came  to  lay  in  their  ancestral  grave  the  two 
brothers  of  her  whom  he  married.  But  long  before 
his  marriage  had  bound  him  by  a  closer  tie  to  these 
northern  regions,  Scotland  had  laid  upon  him  the  spell 
which  she  maintained  to  the  very  end.  In  repeated 
snatches  of  autumnal  leisure  as  Tutor  at  Oxford,  as 
Canon  of  Canterbury,  he  had  visited,  often  under  the 
guidance  of  the  friend  whom  I  have  already  named, 
one  after  another  of  the  scenes,  rich  in  legendary  or 
poetic  or  religious  or  historic  interest,  with  which 
Scotland  abounds.  As  time  went  on,  it  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  no  native  of  Scotland  could  be  more 
imbued,  more  saturated,  with  all  the  manifold  as- 
sociations of  Scottish  story  or  history,  "the  most 
romantic,"  as  he  would  vehemently  assert,  "  by  far 
of  all  European  histories,"  than  one  who  never  drew 
a  breath  of  Scottish  air  till  he  had  become  famous 
by  writing  the  life  of  one  of  the  most  typical  of  Eng- 
lishmen. 

Thus  on  the  very  first  occasion  that  he  opened  his 
lips  to  lecture  on  Ecclesiastical  History  at  Oxford, 
years  before  family  ties  had  made  him  almost  a  coun- 
tryman of  your  own,  in  urging  on  his  future  pupils 
the  importance  of  including  among  the  original  rec- 
ords of  history  "monuments,  and  grave-stones,  and 


6  RECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  i. 

epitaphs  on  the  very  spots  where  they  lie ; "  "  the 
mountain,  and  the  stream,  and  the  shapeless  stone, 
that  has  survived  even  history  and  tradition,"  he 
chose  the  first  of  two  examples  from  "  the  caves,  the 
moors,  and  moss-bogs  of  the  Western  Lowlands ;  " 
from  "the  rude  grave-stones,"  with  their  savage 
rhymes  and  texts  and  names  that  are  to  be  found 
from  shore  to  shore  of  the  Scottish  kingdom.  And 
he  placed  these  side  by  side  with  "  the  faded  paint- 
ings, the  broken  sculptures,  the  rude  epitaphs,  that 
lie  underground  in  the  Roman  catacombs." 

It  is  rarely  that  he  attempts  to  describe  Scottish 
scenery  as  scenery;  Nature,  indeed,  as  Nature,  he 
seldom,  I  might  say  never,  allowed  himself  to  paint. 
But  he  loved  to  dwell  on  his  enjoyment  of  the  scenery 
of  St.  Andrews ;  "  the  roar  and  expanse  of  the  sea  on 
one  side,  the  shattered  relics  of  the  Cathedral  on  the 
other"  —  the  " two  voices,"  as  he  would  call  them, 
"  each  a  mighty  voice."  Of  all  the  great  names  of  lit- 
erature none  was  so  dear  to  him  as  that  of  Walter  Scott, 
that  "  second  Shakespeare  of  your  own,"  the  "  spell 
and  glamour"  of  whose  "wizard  notes"  he  felt  at 
threescore  as  strongly  as  he  had  felt  them  in  boyhood ; 
of  whom  he  delighted  to  speak  not  in  Scotland  only, 
but  alike  on  the  sacred  soil  of  Palestine  and  in  his 
own  Abbey,  now  as  the  greatest  and  purest  writer  of 
fiction,  now  as  "  one  of  the  greatest  religious  teachers 
of  Scottish  Christendom."  Later  in  life  he  could  no 
more  visit  Tours  without  reading  and  re-reading  for 
the  fiftieth  time,  as  he  said,  "  Quentin  Durward,"  than 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUR  PENEIIYN  STANLEY.  1 

he  could  have  made  a  pilgrimage  to  the  graves  of 
the  Covenanters  without  once  more  renewing  his  ac- 
quaintance with  "  Old  Mortality."  Behind  "  all  the 
wretchedness  of  life,  and  all  the  levity  of  language  "  • 
which  marred  the  genius  of  "  the  prodigal  son  of  the 
Scottish  Church,"  he  could  find  in  Robert  Burns  not 
"  the  poet  only,  but  the  prophet ; "  in  that  "  wise 
humour,  that  sagacious  penetration,  that  tender  pa- 
thos," he  could  find  at  times  fragments  of  a  teaching 
that  breathes  the  spirit,  "  not  of  this  or  that  Confes- 
sion, but  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount."  On  his 
undying  interest  in  the  religious  history  of  Scotland 
I  need  hardly  dwell,  or  remind  you  how  keenly  he 
appreciated  not  only  the  more  romantic  and  attrac- 
tive features  of  its  earlier  chapters,  but  "the  defi- 
ant self-reliance  and  dogged  resistance  to  superior 
power,"  "the  force  of  unyielding  conviction,"  "the 
indomitable  native  vigour,"  "  the  marvellous  energy," 
which,  with  whatever  drawbacks  —  drawbacks  on 
which  he  spoke  to  you  with  entire  and  characteristic 
frankness  —  marked  its  later  developments.  How  gal- 
lantly did  he  meet  the  charges  brought  against  the 
clergy  of  Scotland,  at  one  time  by  Samuel  Johnson, 
at  a  more  recent  period  by  Mr.  Buckle.  Even  Mil- 
ton's sneer  at  Rutherford  he  meets  by  the  one  method 
which  he  was  never  tired  of  commending  to  others, 
of  practising  himself — by  bringing  out  the  equally 
true,  the  more  touching,  the  more  Christian  side  of 
the  stern  yet  affectionate  Pastor  of  Anwoth.  With 
what  delight  did  he  dwell  "on  the  divine  fire  of 


8  EECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  i. 

Scotland's  Burning  Bush  that  lies  hid  beneath  the 
rough  husk  "  of  logical  subtleties  and  stubborn  pro- 
tests, of  testimonies  and  confessions.  You  know  how 
his  soul  yearned  over  the  combination  of  deep  reli- 
gious sentiment,  "  of  a  sanctity  equal  to  that  of  the 
strictest  Covenanter  or  the  strictest  Episcopalian," 
with  "  a  just  and  philosophic  moderation,"  the  crown- 
ing instance  of  which  he  found  in  Robert  Leighton, 
"  the  most  apostolical,"  as  he  deliberately  called  him, 
"  of  all  protestant  Scotsmen ; "  who  held  a  place  in 
his  affection  and  veneration  side  by  side  with,  if  not 
even  above,  that  held  by  Richard  Baxter  in  the  South. 
You  may  have  smiled  as  he  rebuked  in  his  own  man- 
ner the  eccentricities  or  the  shortcomings  or  the  ex- 
cesses of  this  or  that  form  of  Scottish  Christianity ; 
for  you  knew  that  your  Church  and  people  had  no 
more  devoted  or  more  earnest  champion ;  that  all 
that  was  great  and  noble  and  inspiring  in  its  past  or 
present  history  was  as  dear  to  him  as  it  was  to  you. 
Some  of  you  can  remember  the  delight  with  which 
(not  here  only,  but  in  Oxford)  he  called  up  from  the 
recollections  of  his  earlier  days  his  one  interview, 
the  first  and  last,  "  ending  in  front  of  the  academic 
church  at  Oxford,"  with  the  "  wise  and  good "  Dr. 
Chalmers.  With  what  fervour  did  he  recite,  not  here 
only,  but  at  Westminster,  the  burning  words  in  which 
Thomas  Carlyle  poured  out  his  angry  but  noble 
grief  over  the  open  grave  of  your  Edward  Irving. 
How  he  rejoiced  heart  and  soul  in  the  society  of  Nor- 
man M'Leod;  how  in  Erskine  of  Linlathen  he  found 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUR  PENRUYN  STANLEY.  9 

one  "  to  hold  brief  converse  with  whom  was  to  have 
his  conversation  in  heaven."  The  very  last  literary- 
work  on  which  that  brain,  active  to  the  last,  was  ever 
engaged,  was  a  paper  on  the  Westminster  Confession, 
the  proofs  actually  corrected  in  that  fatal  illness 
which  took  him  away  from  the  great  work  that  he  was 
doing,  beneath  the  very  roof  where  that  "venerable 
document,"  as  he  loved  to  call  it,  first  saw  the  light. 
I  say  nothing  of  Scottish  friends  and  companions 
and  fellow  workers  who  gathered  round  him  from 
Oxford  days  to  the  day  on  which  he  breathed  his  last ; 
nothing  of  that  Scottish  lady  whose  name  will  be  in- 
separably connected  with  his  own,  in  whose  grave  he 
lies.  I  have  said  enough  to  remind  you,  were  it  needed, 
that  he  of  whom  I  am  to  speak  was  one  towards  whom 
Scotland  may  feel  as  the  almost  adopted  son  of  her  own 
soil,  almost  bone  of  your  bone,  flesh  of  your  flesh. 

Let  me  pass  at  once  to  the  story  of  his  life. 

He  was  born  on  December  13,  in  the  eventful  year 
1815.  The  place  of  his  birth  was  Alderley,  in  Che- 
shire, of  which  his  father  was  rector,  a  place  which 
for  many  centuries  had  formed  part  of  the  ancestral 
estates  of  the  great  house  of  Stanley.  Of  a  branch 
of  that  house,  not  ennobled  till  the  next  generation, 
his  uncle,  Sir  John  Stanley,  who  lived  at  the  Park 
hard  by,  was  the  representative  and  head. 

On  the  position  which  the  family  of  Stanley  has 
held  in  English  history,  whether  in  the  Tudor  or 
Stuart  reigns,  or  later  on,  it  is  not  necessary  to  en- 


10  EECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  i. 

large.  The  thoughts  of  a  resident  in  Westminster 
will  naturally  turn  to  the  Stanley  who  on  the  field 
of  Bosworth  placed  on  the  head  of  the  first  Tudor 
king,  his  own  stepson,  the  crown  that  is  so  often 
reproduced,  sometimes  with  the  bush  on  which  it  was 
found  hanging,  in  the  stately  chapel  of  Henry  VII. 
It  is  possible  that  the  memory  of  those  to  whom  he 
speaks  may  travel  rather  to  the  fatal  field  of  Flodden, 
where  the  sword  of  a  Stanley  of  the  next  generation 
drank  so  deeply  of  the  best  blood  of  Scotland.  Scots- 
men and  Englishmen  will  alike  be  interested  to  note 
the  one  and  only  passage  in  which  one  scion  of  that 
race  cared  publicly  to  recall  his  lineage.  It  is  that 
in  which,  after  describing  the  marvellous  promise  of 
Alexander  Stuart,  the  shortlived  son  of  James  IV., 
the  pupil  of  Erasmus,  of  "  gentle  manners,  playful 
humour,  keen  as  a  hound  in  the  pursuit  of  knowl- 
edge "  —  Ah !  you  see  why  I  dwell  on  the  words  — 
"the  young  Marcellus,"  as  he  calls  him,  "of  the  Scot- 
tish Church,"  "if,"  he  goes  on  to  say,  "he  fell  in  the 
memorable  charge  of  my  namesake  on  that  fatal  day, 
may  he  accept,  thus  late,  the  lament  which  a  kinsman 
of  his  foe  would  fain  pour  over  his  untimely  bier." 

For  a  charming  picture  of  the  home  of  Arthur 
Stanley's  infancy  and  boyhood,  his  friends  owe  a 
debt  of  gratitude  to  Mr.  Augustus  Hare.  "Few 
country  places,"  he  says,  "  in  England  possess  such  a 
singular  charm  as  Alderley :  "  and  he  goes  on,  in  an 
article  in  Macmillan's  Magazine  for  September  in 
last  year,  to  describe  the  spot  "  where  the  flat  pasture 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  11 

lands  of  Cheshire  rise  suddenly  into  the  rocky  ridge 
of  Alderley  Edge,  with  the  Holy  Well  under  an 
overhanging  cliff;  its  gnarled  pine  trees,  its  storm- 
beaten  beacon  tower,  ready  to  give  notice  of  an  inva- 
sion, and  looking  far  over  the  green  plain  to  the  smoke 
which  indicates  in  the  horizon  the  presence  of  great 
manufacturing  towns."  He  tells  us  how  the  beautiful 
beech  woods,  which  clothe  the  western  side  of  that 
upheaving  ridge,  feather  down  over  mossy  lawns  to 
the  lake  or  "  mere  "  beneath.  I  wish  that  time  allowed 
me  to  read  to  you  a  description  of  the  scene  written 
by  Arthur  Stanley's  mother  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  in 
the  first  few  months  of  her  married  life.  You  will  find 
it  in  the  Memorials  of  his  two  parents  published  by 
himself  on  the  anniversary  of  her  death,  in  1879. 
You  would  agree  with  me  that  for  clearness  and  deli- 
cacy of  touch,  that  gifted  son  could  hardly  have  sur- 
passed it  in  the  full  maturity  of  his  powers.  The 
Kectory  itself  cannot  be  described  better  than  in  Mr. 
Hare's  words.  "  A  low  house,  with  a  veranda  forming 
a  wide  balcony  for  the  upper  storey,  where  bird-cages 
hung  among  the  roses;  its  rooms  and  passages  filled  with 
pictures,  books,  and  old  carved  oak  furniture."  His  fa- 
ther, in  his  "  Familiar  History  of  British  Birds,"  speaks 
of  watching  the  starlings  "on  a  well-mown,  short- 
grassed  lawn,  within  a  stone's  throw  of  which  stands  an 
ivy-mantled  parish  church,  with  its  massy  grey  tower, 
from  the  turreted  pinnacle  of  which  rises  a  tall  flagstaff, 
crowned  by  a  weather-cock."  You  will,  I  think,  forgive 
me  for  entering  into  these  details  in  speaking  of  one 
to  whom  all  such  associations  were  so  peculiarly  dear. 


12  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  i. 

Of  his  father  he  has  himself  left  us  a  picture  in  his 
Memoirs  of  Bishop  Stanley,  and  in  the  work  which  I 
have  just  mentioned.  His  personal  character  and  his 
position  in  the  Church  of  England  were  so  peculiar 
and  so  striking,  and  their  bearing  on  his  son's  career, 
however  difficult  to  estimate  precisely,  were  so  unde- 
niable, that,  quite  apart  from  their  intrinsic  interest, 
I  must  not  pass  them  by.  His  educational  advantages 
in  early  life  were  scanty.  He  did  his  best  to  compen- 
sate for  their  absence  by  untiring  industry  at  Cam- 
bridge. He  attained  considerable  proficiency  and 
academic  honours  in  mathematics,  a  study  in  which 
his  son  was  so  unversed,  that  at  least  after  the  close 
of  his  school  life,  an  arithmetical  sum  was  to  him  an 
almost  insoluble  problem.*  Active  on  foot,  and  one 
of  the  very  first  forerunners  of  modern  Alpine  climl> 
ers,  as  much  at  home  in  the  saddle  as  his  son  was  the 
reverse,  he  never  hunted  or  joined  in  field  sports.  But 
the  people  of  Alderley  long  remembered  the  courage 
with  which,  while  all  his  respectable  parishioners  stood 
aghast  at  his  temerity,  that  true  son  of  a  gallant  house 
darted  on  his  little  black  horse  into  the  midst  of  a 
riotous  crowd,  and  by  his  mere  appearance  stopped  a 
desperate  prize  fight.  As  keen  an  observer  of  outward 
nature  as  his  son's  friend,  Charles  Kingsley,  he  was  the 
author  of  a  "Familiar  History  of  Birds,"  which,  thanks 
to  its  accurate  and  careful  studies  of  animal  life,  may 
outlive  many  graver  scientific  works.  But  the  father 

*  "  "Were  I,"  he  once  said  late  in  life,  "  a  citizen  of  this  (American) 
State,"  —  it  was  one  in  which  an  educational  test  was  enforced,  — 
"  I  should  never  enjoy  the  franchise." 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUH  PENEHYN  STANLEY.  13 

of  Arthur  Stanley  was  far  more  than  this.  He  was 
not  only  a  liberal  clergyman  at  a  time  when  to  hold 
liberal  views  was,  at  all  events  so  far  as  the  rural  clergy 
were  concerned,  almost  to  court  social  isolation :  he 
was  an  indefatigable  and  apostolic  priest  at  a  time 
when  and  in  a  district  where  the  standard  of  clerical 
work  was  still  deplorably  low.  In  moral  courage  he 
was  not  surpassed  by  his  fearless  son.  He  was  almost 
the  first  parochial  clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England 
to  do  his  utmost  to  advocate  and  to  promote  the  spread 
of  general  as  well  as  of  religious  instruction  among 
the  neglected  agricultural  population.  He  was  almost 
if  not  quite  the  first  parochial  clergyman  who  ventured 
to  lecture  before  a  Mechanics'  Institute  on  the  then 
young  and  suspected  science  of  Geology.  In  the  midst 
of  the  alarm  and  panic  of  1829  he  attempted  to  throw 
oil  on  the  troubled  waters  by  publishing  "A  Few  Words 
in  behalf  of  our  Catholic  Brethren."  In  the  crisis  of 
the  Reform  Agitation  in  1831,  when  the  very  word 
"  Reform  "  was  a  sound  of  terror  to  the  mass  of  the 
clergy,  he  had  won  sufficient  influence  to  persuade 
a  group  of  clergymen  in  his  diocese  to  join  him  in  a 
petition  to  Parliament  for  the  removal  of  some  of  the 
most  undeniable  of  the  abuses  then  existing  in  the 
English  Church  —  a  petition  which  the  excellent 
Bishop  of  his  diocese  at  once  declined  to  present. 

Removed  in  1837  to  the  see  of  Norwich,  he  was 
grudgingly  received  in  his  new  sphere,  a  diocese  in 
which  the  clergy  were  perhaps  even  more  than  else- 
where indisposed  to  welcome  a  Whig  Bishop,  the 


14  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  i. 

nominee  of  a  Whig  Premier,  who  had  vainly  urged  on 
a  cautious  Primate  the  name  of  Thomas  Arnold  as  the 
preacher  at  his  consecration.  In  his  very  first  sermon 
he  raised  a  whirlwind  of  opposition  by  speaking  of  the 
duty  of  forbearance  towards  Dissent,  and  of  the  im- 
portance of  imparting  secular  as  well  as  religious  edu- 
cation in  parochial  schools.  But  this  was  only  the  first 
of  a  series  of  shocks  which,  in  the  midst  of  entire  and 
absolute  devotion  to  the  spiritual  and  moral  welfare 
of  his  huge  diocese,  he  inflicted  on  the  public  opinion 
of  his  own  clergy,  and  of  wider  circles.  Both  as  a 
Clergyman  and  as  a  Bishop  he  was  emphatically  be- 
fore his  time.  As  we  look  back  at  his  career  we  see 
him  now  standing  on  a  platform  at  Norwich  side  by 
side  with  an  Irish  Catholic  priest,  Father  Mathew, 
the  Apostle  in  the  sister  island  of  the  cause  of  tem- 
perance ;  now  advocating  in  the  National  Society 
such  modifications  of  school  teaching  as  would  open 
the  school-doors  to  the  children  of  Non-conformists ; 
now  addressing  a  reluctant  House  of  Lords  and  two 
indignant  Archbishops  in  favour  of  relaxing  the  terms 
of  subscription  then  enforced  on  the  English  clergy ; 
now,  in  a  sermon  which  was  at  once  characterised 
as  the  boldest  ever  preached  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral, 
disavowing  in  the  presence  of  the  Metropolitan  Clergy 
and  their  Bishop,  the  doctrine  as  usually  understood  of 
the  Apostolical  succession ;  now,  strange  and  almost 
incredible  as  it  may  sound  to  you,  censured  by  a  cer- 
tain section  of  the  religious  public  for  welcoming  to  the 
hearth  and  to  the  heart  of  his  episcopal  home  one  so 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUR  PENRHTN  STANLEY.  15 

honoured  in  all  circles  as  the  gifted  lady  who  then  bore 
the  name  of  Jenny  Lind.  If  he  was  the  first  English 
Bishop  of  his  day  to  throw  himself  heart  and  soul,  in 
conjunction  with  the  present  Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  into 
the  movement  for  the  establishment  of  Ragged  Schools, 
he  was,  no  doubt,  the  very  first  of  English  Bishops  to 
preach  in  his  own  Cathedral  a  funeral  sermon  in  honour 
of  a  saintly  Quaker.  We  live  in  an  age  of  transition. 
It  is  already  difficult  to  understand,  still  more  to  make 
due  allowance  for,  the  storms  of  obloquy  and  clamour 
which  one  after  another  of  such  proceedings  awoke 
in  large  and  influential  circles.  They  at  times  even 
exceeded  those  which  his'  son  encountered  years  after 
with  hereditary  fearlessness.  But  if  they  did  much  to 
embitter  the  life  and  impair  the  usefulness  of  one  of  the 
most  devoted  of  God's  servants  who  ever  held  the  high 
office  of  an  English  Bishop,  it  is  encouraging  to  remem- 
ber how  steadily  and  increasingly  he  won  his  way  to  the 
respect  and  affection  of  those  who  most  differed  from 
him,  of  some  of  those  who  had  expressed  that  difference 
most  strongly.  When,  during  a  rare  visit  to  Scotland 
at  the  close  of  twelve  years  of  unwearied  episcopal 
work,  he  was  called  away  after  a  short  illness  under  the 
hospitable  roof  of  Brahan  Castle,  there  was  a  general 
and  frank  recognition  of  what  was  lost,  and  a  genuine 
burst  of  sorrow  throughout  all  East  Anglia.  Clergy 
and  Laity,  Churchmen  and  Dissenters,  adults  and 
children,  mourned  alike  for  one  who  "  had  found  his 
diocese  a  wilderness  and  left  it  in  comparison  a  culti- 
vated field,"  whose  "good  grey  hairs  and  elastic  step, 


16  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  i. 

and  open  countenance,  with  its  striking  profile  and 
quick  searching  glances,"  are  still  affectionately 
remembered  among  Norfolk  parsonages  and  in  poor 
men's  dwellings.  His  funeral  at  Norwich  drew  togeth- 
er a  concourse  like  in  numbers  and  in  the  diversity 
of  its  elements  to  that  which  gathered  last  year  round 
another  grave  in  the -Abbey  of  Westminster.  At  that 
sight  "  there  came  across  me,"  said  his  son,  "  as  it  had 
never  come  before,  the  high  ideal  and  the  great  oppor- 
tunities of  the  life  of  an  English  Bishop."  And  if 
there  was  much  in  the  son  which  he  did  not  inherit 
from  his  father,  and  if  some  of  the  father's  gifts  were 
not  transmitted  to  his  son,  yet  I  feel  that  the  son  would 
have  forbidden  me  to  speak  to  you  of  himself  without 
reminding  you  of  what  he  owed  to  a  father  whom 
he  never  mentioned  without  honour  and  reverence. 

Of  his  mother  also  he  has  drawn  his  own  portrait. 
But  he  knew  well  that  no  words  could  describe  the 
debt  he  owed  to  her.  She  was  indeed  the  ideal  mother 
for  such  a  son.  Quiet,  calm,  thoughtful,  dignified  even 
in  early  womanhood  (she  became  a  wife  at  eighteen) : 
deeply  religious,  "  with  a  spiritual  insight  which  be- 
longed to  that  larger  sphere  of  religion  which  is  above 
and  beyond  the  passing  controversies  of  the  day ; " 
observant,  and  somewhat  reticent,  yet  full  of  sympa- 
thy to  those  whom  she  loved,  she  possessed  in  girlhood 
and  retained  to  the  end  "  a  rare  delicacy  of  intelli- 
gence," which  Sydney  Smith  happily  characterised  as 
" a  porcelain  understanding"  together  with  a  literary 
taste  and  power  of  expression  of  which  few  but  her 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUR  PENRHTN  STANLEY.  17 

children  were  aware  till  the  publication  of  her  Me- 
morials. She  watched  with  trembling  and  aided  with 
wisdom  the  early  development  of  the  gifted  nature 
of  her  second  son,  whose  rare  genius  she  quickly  rec- 
ognized, and  whose  delicate  frame  and  unformed  con- 
stitution she  did  her  best,  with  a  mother's  devotion, 
to  consolidate  and  strengthen.  And  the  son,  as  he 
grew  up,  repaid  that  devotion,  so  far  as  such  debts 
can  be  repaid,  sevenfold  into  her  bosom.  Every  year 
of  her  long  life  she  became  increasingly  dear  to  him ; 
every  year  her  "  firm  faith,  calm  wisdom,  and  tender 
sympathy,  speaking  the  truth  in  love,  counselled, 
encouraged,  and  comforted  "  him  who  inscribed  these 
words  upon  her  tombstone.  When  death  had  taken 
from  her  almost  at  a  stroke  the  husband  of  her  youth, 
and  two  sons  whose  bones  "  lie  severed  far  and  wide," 
the  one  survivor  drew  her  more  and  more  closely  to 
his  filial  and  loving  heart. 

It  was  in  such  a  home,  and  with  such  parents,  that 
five  children  passed  their  childhood  and  opening  life  : 
Owen,  who  inherited  his  father's  taste  for  the  sea,  and 
chose  it  for  his  calling ;  Mary,  whose  active  life  spent 
in  works  of  beneficence  at  Norwich,  among  the  soldiers 
on  the  Bosphorus,  and  in  Westminster,  will  not  lightly 
be  forgotton;  Arthur,  of  whom  I  am  speaking; 
Charles,  the  future  Royal  Engineer  and  Secretary  to 
the  Governor  of  Van  Diemen's  Land ;  and  the  one 
sister  who  still  survives  to  bear,  as  the  wife  of  the 
Master  of  the  Temple  and  Dean  of  Llandaff,  a  name 
honoured  greatly  in  the  English  Church. 


18  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  i. 

The  future  biographer  may  supplement  Mr.  Hare's 
picture  of  that  home ;  he  can  hardly  improve  upon 
it.  It  is  interesting  to  dwell  on  it  as  one  of  the  very 
highest  types  of  that  large  class  of  cultivated,  modest, 
and  well-ordered  family  circles,  which  have  so  often 
grown  up  under  the  quiet  roof  of  -English  parsonages 
and  Scottish  manses,  and  which  have  made  the  sons  of 
the  clergy  so  important  an  element  in  our  own,  and, 
indeed,  in  all  Protestant  countries ;  and  I  cannot  help 
reminding  you  how,  towards  the  very  close  of  his  life, 
in  a  sermon  preached  at  Glasgow,  after  enlarging  "  on 
the  sacred  and  beneficent  institution  of  a  married 
clergy,"  Arthur  Stanley  spoke  of  his  own  memory  of 
"  a  happy  and  peaceful  childhood  spent  under  the  shade 
of  the  tower  of  a  parish  church,  and  under  the  roof  of 
a  parish  parsonage,  still,"  he  said,  "  after  all  the  vicis- 
situdes of  a  chequered  life,  familiar,  dear,  and  sacred 
beyond  any  other  spot  on  the  surface  of  the  earth." 

I  shall  follow  Mr.  Hare's  guidance  for  a  short  time 
longer.  The  mother's  letters  bring  before  us  her  sec- 
ond boy  as  frail  and  delicate,  yet  beginning,  when  in- 
fancy was  over,  "to  expand  as  one  of  the  spring 
flowers  in  Alderley  May  time,"  and,  again,  as  "  talk- 
ing incessantly,  full  of  pretty  speeches,  repartees,  and 
intelligence;"  "like  his  elder  brother,"  the  gallant 
sailor  that  was  to  be,  "  but  softer  and  more  affection- 
ate ; "  sorely  divided  between  fear  and  curiosity  (that 
curiosity  which  never  died)  at  the  entrance  of  the 
enchanted  cave  of  the  neighbourhood ;  revelling  in  all 
the  legends  of  the  countryside ;  at  five  years  old  de- 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  19 

vouring  Miss  Edgeworth's  "Frank,"  and  translating 
its  lessons  into  practical  life  ;  living  already  in  a  little 
world  of  books  and  poetry  of  his  own. 

At  eight  years  old  a  growing  shyness  and  silence 
alarmed  his  parents,  who  were  wise  enough  greatly  to 
dread  too  exclusive  an  activity  of  brain  and  nerve,  and 
it  was  resolved  to  try  the  effect  of  a  transference  to  a 
small  and  homelike  school  near  the  seaside.  There 
we  are  allowed  to  see  "the  little  sylph,"  as  his  aunt 
calls  him,  happy  in  his  own  way,  proud,  like  other  lit- 
tle boys,  of  hearing  himself  called  by  his  surname  of 
Stanley,  prouder  of  bringing  home  a  prize-book — the 
first  of  many  —  for  history,  devouring  "  Madoc  "  and 
"  Thalaba,"  and  forming  a  love  which  he  was  always 
eager  to  avow  for  Southey's  now  much  forgotten 
poetry ;  laying  the  foundation  of  his  wonderful  faculty 
for  letter  writing  by  writing  home  long  histories  of 
school  life,  describing  his  drill  sergeant  "  as  telling 
him  to  put  on  a  bold,  swaggering  air,  and  not  to  look 
sheepish; "  astonishing  every  one  when  he  came  home 
by  his  memory  and  his  quickness  in  picking  up  knowl- 
edge ;  yet  disquieting  his  mother  niore  than  ever,  when 
his  twelfth  birthday  was  passed,  by  having  no  other 
pursuits,  nor  anything  he  cares  for,  except  reading; 
"  often,"  she  says,  "  I  am  sure,  very  unhappy,  with  a 
laudable  desire  to  be  with  other  boys,  yet  when  with 
them  finding  his  incapacity  to  enter  into  their  pleas- 
ures." " Ah! "  she  says,  with  a  cry  almost  of  despair, 
"it  is  so  difficult  to  manage  Arthur.  Yet  after  all  I 
suspect,"  she  adds,  with  rare  sagacity  and  prophetic 


20  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  i. 

instinct,  "  I  suspect  that  this  is  Arthur's  worst  time, 
and  that  he  will  be  a  happier  man  than  he  is  a  boy." 
Yet  even  she  hardly  foresaw  the  unrevealed  wealth 
of  social  gifts,  of  unbounded  cheerfulness  and  merri- 
ment, of  power  of  adapting  himself  to  the  most 
varied  circles,  above  all,  the  inexhaustible  capacity 
for  tender  friendship,  that  lay  latent  under  that  pass- 
ing cloud  of  boyish  shyness  and  reserve. 

It  is  rarely  that  the  general  public  need  be  called 
on  to  pore  over  the  faded  records  of  the  childhood  of 
distinguished  men.  But  there  is  a  oneness  in  the 
development  of  Arthur  Stanley's  mind  that  gives  a 
singular  interest  to  even  his  boyish,  to  even  his  child- 
ish, effusions.  No  doubt  that  young  brain  was  at  this 
time  abnormally  active.  There  lay  before  me,  as  I 
wrote  what  I  now  say,  a  small  MS.  volume,  written, 
from  beginning  to  end,  in  a  boyish  but,  strange  as 
it  may  seem  to  those  who  knew  him  later,  a  singu- 
larly clear  hand.  On  the  title-page  are  inscribed  the 
words,  "  The  Poetical  Works  of  Arthur  Penrhyn  Stan- 
ley, Vol.  II.,"  and  underneath  is  a  drawing,  his  own 
handiwork,  of  Neptune  in  his  Chariot,  with  Amphi- 
trite  and  the  sea  nymphs  sporting  around.  The  vol- 
ume contains  13  or  14  poems  in  various  metres,  and 
on  various  subjects ;  not  only  odes  to  the  Humming- 
bird, to  the  Owl,  to  the  Stork,  but  to  such  abstract 
ideas  as  Superstition,  to  Time,  to  Forgiveness,  to 
Death,  to  Sleep,  to  Justice.  It  includes  a  poem  on 
the  Destruction  of  the  Druids,  written  in  a  tripping 
dactylic  metre,  and  a  ballad  on  a  strange  legend  of 


CHAP,  i.]        AETUUE  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  21 

King  Harold.  This,  remember,  is  Vol.  II.,  and  the 
poems,  which  are  carefully  dated,  were  written  in  the 
years  1826-27,  when  the  young  poet  was  of  the  age 
of  10  and  11.  They  seein  to  me  (I  will  not  trouble  you 
with  specimens)  to  show  more  marked  originality  than 
almost  any,  that  I  have  seen,  of  his  English  verses 
written  much  later  at  Rugby.  His  little  study  there 
soon  gained  the  nickname  of  "  Poet's  Corner,"  and  from 
time  to  time  he  gained  much  credit  by  his  school  com- 
positions in  English  verse,  especially  for  a  prize  poem, 
composed  at  the  age  of  18,  on  Charles  Martel's  victory 
near  Tours, "  the  more  than  Marathon  of  France,"  as  he 
happily  calls  it  in  his  final  line.  Yet  I  suspect  that,  quite 
apart  from  the  effect  of  public-school  life  on  a  boy  of 
poetic  temperament,  his  Rugby  life  developed  mainly 
other  sides  of  that  imaginative  and  active  brain.  He 
was  intent  there  rather  on  absorbing  ideas  and  knowl- 
edge than  on  giving  out  his  own  impressions.  Certainly 
in  my  own  day  it  wa's  not  so  much  to  him  as  to  Arthur 
Hugh  Clough —  the  gifted  author  of  much  besides, 
known  perhaps  to  some  here  through  that  charming 
description  of  a  Long  Vacation  spent  by  Oxford 
undergraduates  at  the  Bothie  with  the  name  un- 
pronounceable to  Southern  lips  —  that  we  Rugby 
schoolboys  looked  back  as  the  true  poet  among  our 
distinguished  predecessors. 

The  year  1828  was  an  eventful  epoch  in  Arthur 
Stanley's  life.  It  was  the  year  marked  by  the  first 
foreign  tour  of  one  who  was  afterwards  to  be  a  traveller 
of  travellers.  Mr.  Hare  has  told  us  how  when  first  he 


22  RECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  i. 

saw  the  great  Pic  du  Midi  rise  above  a  mass  of  clouds, 
he  could  find  no  words  to  express  his  ecstasy  but 
"  What  shall  I  do  ?  what  shall  I  do  ?  "  And  his  jour- 
nal written  at  the  time  was  worthy  of  the  future  author 
of  "Sinai  and  Palestine."  I  have  been  favoured  with 
words  written  in  November  of  the  same  year  by  a  dis- 
cerning lady,  an  absolute  stranger  to  the  Stanley  fam- 
ily, in  which  she  speaks  of  herself  as  having  been  — 

"Much  pleased  and  still  more  surprised  by  the  perusal  of  a 
journal  during  a  tour  in  the  Pyrenees  made  in  the  last  summer  by 
an  English  family.  The  writer  is  a  boy  of  twelve  years  old,  who, 
if  he  attains  manhood,  and  keeps  the  promise  he  has  hitherto  given, 
will,  I  do  not  doubt,  hereafter  be  classed  amongst  the  distinguished 
literary  characters  of  this  country.  His  mind  appears  to  have  been 
open  to  all  the  beauty  and  wonders  he  saw,  which  he  describes  in 
language  always  good,  and  often  poetical.  The  account  he  gives 
of  their  expedition  to  the  '  Maladetta '  is  one  of  the  very  best  I 
ever  read  of  similar  excursions  in  any  book  of  travels." 

Such  prophecies  may  have  been  often  made.  It  is 
seldom  that  they  meet  with  such  entire  fulfilment ! 

It  was  in  the  same  year  that,  after  much  consulta- 
tion, his  parents  resolved  to  remove  their  boy  to 
Rugby,  and  place  him  under  the  care  of  Dr.  Arnold, 
who  was  just  entering  on  a  career  which,  in  the 
prophetic  language  of  the  letter  to  which  he  owed 
his  election,  was  to  "  change  the  face  of  education  all 
through  the  public  schools  of  England."  * 

It  was  a  momentous  decision,  and  one  that  must 
have  required  all  the  encouragement  that  so  keen- 

*  The  words  are  those  used  by  Dr.  Hawkins,  late  Provost  of 
Oriel,  who  has  passed  away  while  these  pages  were  passing  through 
the  press. 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  23 

sighted  a  friend  as  the  elder  Augustus  Hare,  who  was 
about  to  many  Mrs.  Stanley's  sister  and  who  was 
taken  into  counsel,  could  venture  to  give.  English 
public  schools  in  those  days  were  but  rough  homes  for 
sensitive  boys.  At  all  times  there  is  much  in  their  life 
especially  trying  to  boys  of  exceptional  genius;  to  all 
in  fact  who  are  out  of  sympathy — out  of  touch,  so  to 
speak  —  with  the  average  tendencies  and  tastes  of 
boyhood.  Rugby  was,  if  a  staunch  Rugbeian  may  be 
allowed  to  say  so,  of  small  repute  outside  the  circle 
of  a  few  Midland  counties  till  the  advent  of  Arnold. 
The  innumerable  readers  of  "Tom  Brown"  will  find 
in  it  a  faithful  picture  of  the  rougher  side  of  school 
life  as  it  presented  itself  in  the  earlier  days  of  our 
great  Head  Master.  Arthur  Stanley  joined  the  school 
from  which  he  was  to  receive,  and  to  which  he  was  to 
give,  so  much,  in  January,  1829.  Whatever  his  suf- 
ferings in  that  new  life,  he  yet  with  the  courage  that 
lay  behind  a  timid  exterior,  put  a  brave  face  on  the 
matter.  In  letters  to  his  former  schoolmaster,  towards 
whom  he  cherished  a  loyal  affection,  the  new  boy  de- 
scribes himself  as  domiciled  for  the  time  at  a  small 
boarding-house  of  fourteen  boys — the  larger  house,  of 
which  he  was  soon  to  be  a  more  permanent  inmate,  be- 
ing not  yet  completed — each  of  the  fourteen  having  a 
small  study  to  himself,  "  which,"  he  says,  "  is  a  very 
great  advantage."  He  goes  on  to  give  a  characteristic 
sketch  of  those  now  world-famous  school  buildings : 
the  "  towers  and  turrets,"  looking,  to  his  boyish  fancy, 
"like  those  of  some  stately  castle;"  "the  Close,  with 


24  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  i. 

its  many  tall  trees  "  —  on  his  return,  years  after,  from 
Greece,  he  rejoiced  once  more  over  those  ancient  elms 
—  "  and  its  small  chapel,"  —  where  a  monument  to 
himself  will  soon  be  added  to  that  of  Arnold,  —  of  the 
surrounding  country,  where  his  eye  already  marked 
in  those  sluggish  brooks  "  the  numerous  branches  of 
the  Avon"  —  the  Avon  of  Wycliffe  and  of  Shake- 
speare —  "  winding  through  extensive  meadows."  He 
appears  to  wish  to  amuse  his  former  instructor,  he 
certainly  astounds  his  later  friends,  by  announcing 
that  "  he  has  been  chosen  to  write  out  one  of  the  Prae- 
postor's prize-essays,  on  account  of  writing  such  a  good 
hand"  —  carefully  underlining  the  now  almost  incred- 
ible statement.  He  tells  him  "  how  the  school  now 
numbers  167  boys,  but  is  rapidly  increasing  with  Dr. 
Arnold's  fame ; "  he  drops,  poor  boy !  the  remark  "that 
he  has  not  yet  fixed  on  anyone  whom  he  should  like 
as  a  friend."  Doubtless,  for  a  time,  he  suffered 
acutely  from  something  worse  than  isolation  and 
want  of  sympathy.  But  those  who  have  had  boys  at 
school  will  understand  his  silence  on  the  subject. 
Years  later,  when  all  such  trials  were  over,  on  the  eve 
of  competing  for  the  Balliol  scholarship,  he  wrote  to 
a  friend  already  at  Oxford,  "  I  recollect  when  I  first 
came  here,  and  was  much  bullied  at  my  first  house, 
that  I  one  day  walked  disconsolately  up  to  the 

school,  where  I  met ,  who  took  me  round  the 

Close,  and  asked  me  how  I  liked  the  place  ?  I,  being 
too  broken-spirited  to  enter  into  a  detail  of  my  griev- 
ances, said,  in  the  very  bitterness  of  my  heart,  that 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUR  PENRHTN  STANLEY.  25 

I  liked  it  very  much."  How  many  disconsolate 
schoolboys  have  made  the  same  answer !  But  those 
days  soon  ended.  He  rose  rapidly  in  the  school, 
thanks,  he  tells  his  old  friend,  to  his  careful  teaching ; 
how  could  it  have  been  otherwise  ?  He  attained,  if 
not  robustness  of  constitution,  yet  an  entire  immu- 
nity from  conscious  ill-health ;  "  my  health,"  he  tells 
his  former  teacher,  "  is  almost  perfect.  From  one  half- 
year  to  another  I  pass  with  scarcely  a  day's  sickness." 
He  was  able  once  more  to  indulge  in  comparative 
freedom  his  taste  for  reading,  "keen  as  a  hound"  — 
I  borrow  his  own  words,  which  I  have  already  quoted 
—  "  keen  as  a  hound  in  the  pursuit  of  knowledge." 
He  writes  of  himself  as  "reading  to  myself,  chiefly 
history.  I  have  got  through  all  Mitford  and  all  Gib- 
bon, and  several  smaller  ones,  with  greater  success 
than  I  could  have  expected."  "  I  don't  know,"  he  says, 
still  writing  to  his  old  schoolmaster,  "  whether  you 
have  heard  much  of  Dr.  Arnold,  or  conceived  bad  opin- 
ions of  him.  It  is  possible  that  you  may  have  heard 
him  abused  in  every  way.  He  has  been  branded  with 
the  names  of  Sabbath-breaker  and  Infidel.  But  seeing 
so  much  of  him  as  I  do,  I  may  safely  say  that  he  is  as 
thorough  a  Christian  as  you  can  anywhere  find.  His 
sermons  are  certainly  the  most  beautiful  that  I  ever 
heard,  and  rendered  doubly  impressive  by  his  delivery. 
He  has  reformed  the  school  in  every  possible  way, 
introducing  History,  Mathematics,  Modern  Lan- 
guages, Examinations,  Prizes,  &c."  My  younger  hear- 
ers will  be  startled  at  hearing  that  such  now  established 


26  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  i. 

branches  of  a  school  curriculum  were  then  looked  on 
as  revolutionary  innovations.  "  I  am  afraid,"  he  adds, 
"  that  you  would  not  find  many  in  the  school  to  give 
him  as  good  a  character  as  this,  as  perhaps  he  has  got 
a  little  more  than  the  usual  odium  attached  to  a  Head 
Master,  but  I  think  there  are  few  who  would  ques- 
tion his  talents  or  his  sermons.  I  am,  as  you  may 
perceive,  thoroughly  prejudiced  in  his  favour.  .The 
common  report  is  that  he  will  be  a  Bishop.  I  hope  it 
will  not  be  before  my  departure."  It  is  fair  to  add 
that,  in  a  conversation  held  years  after  with  an  Ox- 
ford undergraduate,  he  confessed  that,  though  at  first 
charmed  with  his  Head  Master,  there  was  yet  a  time 
in  his  schoolboy  life  in  which  he  looked  on  him  as 
"  fierce  and  alarming  " :  and  thought  that  what  he  used 
to  hear  of  him  at  home  was  somewhat  exaggerated, 
and  that  there  was  some  truth  in  what  the  boys  used  to 
say  about  his  harshness.  "  It  was  after  my  getting  into 
the  fifth  form,  and  during  my  three  and  a-half  years 
under  him  in  the  sixth,  that  I  began  to  feel  what 
Arnold  really  was.  During  all  the  time  that  he  was 
being  publicly  abused,  and  while  nobody  befriended 
him,  I  was  perfectly  satisfied  in  my  own  mind  that  I 
was  in  intercourse  with  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
men  of  the  age.  What  anxiety  there  was  among  some 
of  us  to  hear  him  preach!  When  Sunday  came  round 
—  when  he  went  from  his  seat  up  to  the  pulpit,  and 
we  saw  that  he  was  going  to  preach  —  I  and  Vaughan 
used  to  nudge  each  other  with  delight.  When  I  came 
back  from  the  examination  at  Balliol,  we  posted  home 
late  at  night,  in  order  to  avoid  missing  his  sermon." 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUE  PENRHTN  STANLEY.  27 

Rugby,  in  fact,  soon  became  to  him,  as  to  how  many 
others  since,  when  the  first  troubles  of  his  early  days 
were  at  an  end,  I  will  not  say  a  second  home,  but  a 
place  invested  with  a  dearness  and  a  sacredness  of  its 
own,  not  inferior  to,  though  different  from,  that  which 
attached  to  such  homes  as  the  Rectory  at  Alderley. 
School  distinctions,  of  course,  fell  to  his  lot  one  after 
another.  He  records  in  one  of  his  letters  how,  by 
winning  the  prizes  for  a  Greek  poem  and  a  Latin  essay, 
he  had  succeeded  at  last  in  carrying  off  the  five  great 
school  distinctions  then  existing — a  feat  in  which  he  was 
only  rivalled  once  in  the  history  of  Arnoldian  Rugby,  by 
A.  H.  Clough,  whose  name,  dear  to  all  Rugby  men,  I 
have  already  mentioned.  Indeed,  the  most  definite 
school  tradition  that  I,  as  a  schoolboy  there  myself, 
found  attached  to  his  name  was,  that  on  handing  to  him 
the  very  last  of  these  five  prizes,  his  master  and  ours 
broke  for  the  first  time  the  profound,  the  almost  grim 
silence  which,  strange  as  it  may  sound  to  modern  ears, 
he  invariably  maintained  on  the  annual "  Speech-Day," 
to  utter  the  expressive  words,  "  Thank  you,  Stanley ; 
we  have  nothing  more  to  give  you." 

Meantime  his  literary  instincts  were  finding  their  full 
satisfaction,  not  only  in  the  work  done  at  the  feet  of  his 
renowned  master,  but  in  his  own  insatiable  reading, 
as  partly  described  above.  Now,  too,  it  was  that  he 
developed  the  first  germs  of  that  marvellous  capacity 
for  forming  warm  and  lasting  friendships  which  was 
to  the  very  end  of  his  life  one  of  his  most  marked 
characteristics.  It  is  touching  even  now  to  read  how 


28  RECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  i. 

the  boy,  so  shy  and  reserved  in  his  beloved  home,  so 
forlorn  and  solitary  in  his  first  year  or  two  of  Rugby 
life,  whose  incapacity  for  entering  into  intimacy  with 
other  boys  had  once  so  gravely  alarmed  a  mother's 
heart,  was  already  realising  her  hopes  that  the  cloud 
that  isolated  him  was  only  transient.  A  letter  exists, 
written  at  the  close  of  his  schooldays  to  an  older  friend,* 
then  an  undergraduate,  in  which,  after  speaking  of  his 
soon  leaving  Rugby, "  the  place  where  I  have  spent  five 
happy  years,  learned  knowledge  human  and  divine,  as 
probably  I  shall  never  learn  it  again,"  he  speaks  also  of 
Rugby  as  "  the  place,  too,  of  my  several  friendships 
(forgive  me,"  he  inserts,  "  for  the  word  several)  to  last, 
I  hope,  none  lessened  by  the  existence  of  others,  to  the 
latest  hour  of  my  life."  How  many  there  are  still 
living,  how  many  who  have  passed  away,  whom  the 
young  writer  of  these  words  was  to  inspire  with  feelings 
which  even  the  sacred  word  friendship  seems  only 
inadequately  to  express !  What  a  genius  for  friendship, 
in  the  very  highest  and  noblest  conception  of  its  mean- 
ing, was  he  to  develope !  How  he  loved  his  friends,  how 
steadfastly  did  he  stand  by  them ;  to  how  many  did  he 
open  his  heart  and  how  many  hearts  did  he  win  —  win 
and  raise  and  ennoble — by  his  friendship,  without  stir- 
ring the  slightest  sense  of  jealousy  or  rivalry  in  the  men 
of  all  ages  and  of  all  classes  who  delighted  in  the  sense 
of  each  other's  affection  for  him  !  How  they,  how  we, 
rejoiced  to  bring  our  friends  into  the  charmed  circle 

*  Dr.  Greenhill,  who  has  kindly  allowed  me  to  read  many  of 
these  early  letters.  • 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUR  PENHHYN  STANLEY.  29 

of  his  companionship  and  love.  How  prophetic,  seen 
now,  to  those  who  saw  the  circle  of  his  friends  re- 
cruited year  after  year,  the  youthful  words,  "  my  sev- 
eral friendships,  to  last,  I  hope,  none  lessened  by  the 
existence  of  the  others,  to  the  latest  hour  of  my  life  !  " 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that, 
happy  and  cheerful  as  he  was  at  school,  he  ever  became 
a  genuine  specimen  of  what  is  now  ordinarily  under- 
stood by  a  "  public-school  boy."  He  ranged  freely  over 
the  country,  not  very  interesting  in  itself,  round  Rugby; 
but  he  never  acquired  any  taste  for  the  ordinary  games 
and  amusements  which  now-a-days  fill  the  foreground 
in  the  popular  conception  of  young  Rugby  life.  In- 
deed the  taste  for  such  games,  far  less  organised  than 
they  are  now,  was  less  widely  diffused  than  it  has  since 
become,  and  the  distinction  between  the  many  who 
played  or  idled,  and  the  few  who  worked,  greatly  effaced 
since,  was  in  the  earlier  and  rougher  period  of  Arnold's 
time  still  strongly  marked.  There  is  a  short  paper  in 
the  old  "  Rugby  Magazine,"  which  it  was  not  till  the 
last  time  I  saw  him,  within  less  than  four  weeks  of  his 
death,  that,  while  talking  of  this  very  subject,  I  learned 
to  be  his.  He  speaks  there  of  himself  and  his  young 
co-editors  as  turning  out  with  heated  brains  for  a  ten 
minutes'  walk  in  the  Close  before  "  locking  up,"  and 
meeting  the  other,  the  more  numerous  and  athletic, 
portion  of  the  school  coming  in  from  their  summer 
afternoon  spent  in  cricket.  It  is  a  paper  which  could 
scarcely  have  been  written  at  the  present  day :  the  state 
of  things  which  it  describes — the  division  of  the  School 


30  EECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  i. 

into  two  classes — is  one  which,  for  good  or  evil,  for  good 
and  evil,  mainly  I  trust  for  good,  has  passed  away.  Once 
at  a  Rugby  dinner  he  described,  with  the  humour  of 
which  he  was  a  master,  how, "  as  I  sat  in  that  study  read- 
ing Mitford,  a  stone  thrown  at  me  by  a  schoolfellow 
came  through  the  window,  struck  me  on  the  forehead 
here,"  striking  his  forehead  as  he  spoke,  "  and  left  an 
almost  indelible  scar."  The  story  is  characteristic  of 
the  involuntary  disgust  with  which  the  sight  of  a 
schoolfellow  sitting  at  home  to  read,  otherwise  than 
under  compulsion,  would  have  inspired  nine  out  of  ten 
of  the  schoolboys  of  the  day.  And  the  result  of  this 
state  of  things  was  that  his  direct  influence  on  the 
School  was  probably  confined  to  the  circle  of  those  who 
were  more  or  less  like-minded.  "  The  young  barbari- 
ans all  at  play  "  cared  little,  though  they  learned  to  look 
on  him  with  a  certain  awe,  for  their  gifted  schoolfellow, 
the  quiet,  kindly,  studious,  high-bred  Praepostor.  "  Not 
being  marked  out  from  others  in  any  game,"  writes  one 
who,  as  a  very  young  boy,  was  with  him  in  the  same 
house,  and  rose  years  after  to  the  headship  of  the  School 
—  "  not  even  to  the  extent  of  dough's  prowess  as  goal 
keeper  at  football,  his  name  passed  away  very  quickly 
at  his  house,  save  for  the  holidays  which  he  won  for  us 
at  Oxford."  Such  was,  I  doubt  not,  the  case  with  these 
outer  barbarians.  But  I  am  bound  to  say,  in  defence 
of  my  old  school,  that  coming  to  it  as  I  did  at  an  unusu- 
ally late  age,  and  being  admitted  at  once  to  the  society 
of  my  older  schoolfellows,  I  found  his  name,  after 
the  lapse  of  three  years  from  his  leaving  Rugby,  sur- 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  31 

rounded  by  the  halo  of  departed  genius ;  and  I  may 
add  that  I  for  one  could  say  by  heart  most  of  his 
Oxford  prize  poem  before  I  had  ever  seen  its  author. 

Do  I  fatigue  you  with  these  boyish  reminiscences  ? 
Let  me  add  one.  In  a  letter  written  towards  the  end 
of  his  time  at  Rugby  he  speaks  of  rumours  coming 
from  Oxford  of  the  rising  reputation  of  "William 
Gladstone,"  who  had  been  a  pupil  for  a  time  of 
Stanley's  first  teacher.  In  later  life  he  recounted 
the  story  of  his  first  meeting  the  present  Prime 
Minister  and  member  for  Mid-Lothian  —  then  a  boy 
of  fifteen,  himself  a  few  years  younger  —  at  the  house 
of  Mr.  Gladstone's  father.  "Have  you  ever  read 
Gray's  poems  ?  "  said  the  future  statesman.  "  No," 
replied  his  younger  acquaintance.  "  Then  do  so  at 
once,"  said  the  elder  vehemently,  and  produced  the 
volume.  It  was  taken  home,  read  at  once,  and  en- 
joyed ;  and  to  the  end  of  his  life  it  was  difficult  for  him 
to  speak  of  the  scenery  of  Greece,  or  to  go  round  the 
tombs  of  the  earlier  kings  in  the  Abbey,  without  the 
appropriate  quotation  from  Gray  rising  to  his  lips. 
For  myself,  I  shall  always  think  of  the  poet  as  asso- 
ciated not  least  of  all  with  the  veteran  statesman  and 
the  friend  whom  he  will,  I  trust,  long  survive. 

The  end  of  his  schoolboy  days  drew  near.  You 
will  find  a  graphic  account  in  Mr.  Hare's  paper  of 
the  eventful  week  in  which  he  won,  the  first  of  many 
Rugby  boys  who  have  followed  in  his  steps,  the  first 
of  the  two  vacant  scholarships  at  Balliol.  The  tumult 
of  joy  which  such  marked  success  raised  in  his  own 


32  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  i. 

heart,  in  the  large  circle  of  Rugby  men  at  Oxford, 
at  Rugby,  and  not  least  at  Alderley,  is  more  easy 
perhaps  for  Rugbeians  and  Oxonians  to  realise  than 
for  those  to  whom  the  details  of  Oxford  competitions 
are  a  matter,  if  not  of  absolute  yet  of  comparative 
indifference.  "  It  is  a  great  triumph,"  he  says,  in  a 
letter  to  that  old  schoolmaster  to  whom  in  that  hour 
of  triumph  he  was  still  loyal,  "  a  great  triumph  to  us, 
for  Rugby  has  hitherto  been  kept  rather  in  the  back- 
ground by  other  schools,  who  this  year  were  entirely 
defeated."  In  the  same  letter  he  once  more,  with 
characteristic  chivalry,  returns  to  the  charge  in  be- 
half of  Dr.  Arnold.  But  I  will  not  repeat  to  you  the 
emphatic  words  in  which  he  asserts  his  unaltered 
adherence  to  his  former  opinion. 

In  the  following  June  he  left  Rugby.  There  is  a 
humorous  and  graphic  account  in  one  of  his  letters 
of  the  final  school  examination,  conducted  on  behalf 
of  Oxford  by  the  present  Bishop  of  Salisbury,  then 
tutor  of  Balliol,  and  soon  to  become  Head  Master  of 
Winchester,  and  on  behalf  of  Cambridge  by  Dr. 
Wordsworth,  now  well  known  as  the  venerable  Bishop 
of  Lincoln.  After  recounting  how  his  own  name  was 
proclaimed  first  in  the  anxiously  expected  list,  and 
immediately  explaining  that  this  was  merely  because 
he  was  senior  in  the  school,  and  that  Vaughan,  his  dear 
friend  and  future  brother-in-law,  was  really  bracketed 
as  his  equal,  he  expresses  the  hope  that  his  friend 
"  will  not  think  it  affected  in  him  to  say  that  he  could 
not  possibly  have  wished  it  better."  "  There  is  all," 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUR  PENRHTN  STANLEY.  33 

he  writes,  "  that  was  necessary  to  gratify  every  indi- 
vidual feeling  of  vanity ;  all  to  make  me  happy  for 
Vaughan,  to  whom  I  should  not  at  all  have  grudged 
the  first  place ;  all  to  make  me  happy  for  the  School." 
"For  now,"  he  adds,  with  a  dash  of  public  spirit 
which  every  public-school  boy  or  man  will  appreciate, 
"  let  no  one  say  of  me,  whether  in  my  successes  or  my 
failures  at  Oxford,  that  I  was  the  first  at  Rugby,  and 
therefore  must  be  taken  as  a  specimen  for  better  or 
worse  of  the  School.  The  answer  is  ready  in  black 
and  white  —  that  there  was  and  is  another  equal,  who 
would,  had  it  not  been  for  his  long  illness  before  the 
examination,  have  most  probably  been  before  me." 

I  may  venture  to  say  that  there  is  no  true  son  of 
Rugby  living  who  does  not  rejoice  in  a  •"  bracket " 
which  linked  together  those  two  friends,  a  due  esti- 
mate of  whose  widely  different  gifts  must  have  sorely 
puzzled  the  most  discriminating  of  examiners. 

The  hour  came  at  which  he  bade  goodby  to  his 
school  life.  I  have  been  allowed  to  read  a  letter  in 
which  he  describes  the  scene  in  which  one  who  has 
been  called  the  hero-schoolmaster  had  to  part  with  one 
who  has  been  felicitously  called  the  hero-pupil.*  "  I 
saw  him,"  he  writes,  "  but  for  a  few  minutes,  but  those 
few  minutes  were  worth  much ;  "  and  after  describing 
their  brief  conversation,  the  promises  of  introduction 
to  his  old  pupil,  the  late  Bishop  of  Salisbury,  and  to 
a  newer  friend,  the  present  Lord  Chancellor  of  Eng- 

*  In  the  touching  sermon  preached  in  the  Abbey  by  the  Dean  of 
Llandaff  on  the  Sunday  after  the  death  of  his  brother-in-law. 


34  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  i. 

land,  and  then  the  parting  words,  the  very  tones  of  the 
twice  repeated  "  God  bless  you,  Stanley ;  "  he  goes  on, 
"  and  so  we  parted,  and  so  that  constant  and  delight- 
ful and  blessed  intercourse  I  have  had  with  him  for 
three  years  closed  for  ever.  My  comfort  is  that  I  shall 
see  him  now,  when  I  do  see  him,  with  greater  ease ; 
but  even  that  may  and  must  be  soon  broken  off,  by 
his  becoming,  what  every  year  makes  more  inevitable, 
a  Bishop.  I  see  I  have  said  for  ever.  God  grant  not 
for  ever  literally,  though  it  may  be  so  on  earth." 

There  is  something,  you  will  say,  overstrained  in  all 
this.  He  himself  so  far  agreed  with  you  that  he  spoke 
at  the  end  of  his  life  of  a  certain  exaggeration  of  tone 
in  his  youthful  letters,  not  on  this  subject  specially, 
but  on  all.  Yet  which  of  us  would  wish  to  rob  youth 
of  its  special  gift  of  a  generous  enthusiasm  ?  Who 
of  us  would  not  rejoice  to  see  our  sons  fired  with  a 
like  ardour  for  another  Arnold  ? 

Before  many  weeks  were  over  he  had  the  delight  of 
visiting  his  beloved  master  in  his  home  among  the 
Westmoreland  lakes  —  not  where  some  of  his  later  pu- 
pils of  the  same  age  were  privileged  to  see  him,  at  Fox 
How,  which  was  then  in  the  builder's  hands  —  but  at 
Allan  Bank,  overlooking  Grasmere,  which  had  been 
the  temporary  home  of  the  poet  Wordsworth.  Space 
and  time  warn  me  to  leave  to  his  biographer  his  short 
but  delightful  notices  of  Arnold  in  his  home ;  of  Words- 
worth, to  seeing  whom  he  had  looked  forward  with  all 
the  interest  of  a  schoolboy  admirer ;  of  Hartley  Cole- 
ridge ;  of  Captain  Hamilton,  author  of  "  Cyiil  Thorn- 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  35 

ton,"  and  "Men  and  Manners  in  America,"  "still  lame," 
says  the  youthful  student  of  Napier's  History,  "  from  a 
wound  received  at  Albuera ; "  or  his  humorous  account 
of  the  expedition  to  Keswick,  and  the  vain  watching  like 
a  cat  outside  Greta  Bank  in  hopes  of  seing  Southey,  of 
one  who  to  the  end  of  his  days  upheld  against  all 
comers  the  poetic  merits  of  "  Thalaba  "  and  "  Kehama." 
The  visit  was  paid  in  1834.  Less  than  eight  years 
later,  on  the  12th  of  June,  1842,  the  master  to  whom 
he  still  looked  with  a  no  less  ardent  if  less  boyish 
devotion  was  taken  from  the  work  which  he  was  car- 
rying on  with  unclouded  success  at  Rugby.  Arnold 
was  still  comparatively  a  young  man — he  wanted  three 
years  of  fifty  ;  to  all  appearance  unusually  strong  and 
vigorous,  growing  every  year  in  intellectual  grasp,  and 
dying  at  the  very  moment  when  the  combination  of  that 
Christian  faith  which  sustained  him  in  the  swift  and 
painful  passage  from  life  to  death  with  an  ardent  and 
inextinguishable  love  of  truth,  might  have  opened  for 
him  a  fresh  field  of  untold  influence  in  the  religious 
life  of  England.  He  had  outlived  much  of  the  odium 
with  which  his  position  as  a  religious  teacher,  a  church 
reformer,  and  an  outspoken  opponent  of  the  rising 
Oxford  movement  had  at  one  time  covered  him.  His 
Oxford  pupils  still  recall  the  rapid  revulsion  from 
fierce  aversion  to  warm  admiration  produced  at  the 
University  by  the  delivery  of  his  historical  lectures 
in  the  spring  of  that  fatal  year.  The  shock  that  ran 
through  England  at  the  news  of  his  death  few  here 
may  remember.  It  remains  in  the  memory  of  his  pupils 


36  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  i. 

as  something  almost  or  quite  unparalleled.  "  To  me," 
said  Stanley,  who  had  hurried  to  Rugby  on  receiving 
the  dreadful  news  in  London  from  the  present  Dean  of 
Durham,  "  to  me,"  he  said,  in  the  first  letter  that  one 
who  was  then  his  pupil  and  is  now  his  successor  ever 
received  from  him,  "  it  seems  as  though  the  solid  earth 
had  passed  away  beneath  my  feet."  He  preached  the 
funeral  sermon  at  that  saddest  of  gatherings  in  Rugby 
Chapel ;  stood  by  the  grave  side  by  side  with  his  father 
and  his  friends,  and  immediately  volunteered  to  write 
his  Biography ;  "  a  work,"  he  said,  "  which  from  first 
to  last  I  thoroughly  enjoyed."  And  well  he  might ! 
When  was  such  a  tribute  paid  in  English  literature  by 
a  pupil  to  his  teacher  ?  Let  me  add  that  no  12th  of 
June  ever  passed  without  his  writing  to  Mrs.  Arnold, 
or,  when  she  had  passed  away,  to  her  daughter  at  Fox 
How ;  few  on  which  one  or  other  of  his  own  Rugby 
pupils  failed  to  write  to  himself. 

Two  questions  at  once  arise.  How  far  is  Arnold's 
reputation  due  to  his  biographer,  rather  than  to  his  own 
merits  ?  And  what  was  the  effect  of  Arnold's  influence 
on  Stanley  ?  The  first  is  a  question  of  fact,  the  other 
one  of  inference  and  conjecture.  Some  of  us  have 
heard  it  said,  in  answer  to  the  former  question,  not 
merely  that  Arnold's  work  and  character  were  brought 
home  to  thousands,  to  whom  otherwise  they  would 
have  remained  unknown,  by  that  matchless  Biography, 
but  that  the  man  himself  was  transfigured  by  the 
genius  and  devotion  of  the  biographer  —  that  the  por- 
trait is,  in  fact,  an  ideal  picture.  Nay,  it  has  been 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUR   PENRHYN  STANLEY.  37 

more  than  whispered  in  these  latter  days,  that  the 
Arnold  of  the  biographer  is  a  legendary  being,  a 
mjrthical  personage,  created  by  the  picturesque,  but 
unfaithful,  fancy  of  Arthur  Stanley. 

It  is  encouraging  to  feel  how  baseless  sometimes  are 
the  final  results  of  an  over-restless  scepticism  even  in 
the  hands  of  those  who  would  have  no  words  too  strong 
for  their  condemnation  of  a  "negative  criticism"  on 
the  part  of  others.  We,  his  pupils,  are  fast  passing 
away.  Let  one  of  those  who  still  remain  record  his 
emphatic  protest  against  these  extravagances  of  in- 
credulity, this  entire  misreading  of  the  character  of 
two  such  men.  It  is  impossible,  alas !  that  the  biog- 
raphy of  Stanley  can  be  written  by  one  so  gifted  and 
furnished  for  the  task  as  he  was  for  his;  but  it  will 
be  much  if  it  be  written  by  one  equally  unsparing  of 
pains  to  verify  every  touch  and  every  line,  as  deter- 
mined to  check  every  impression  of  his  own  mind  by 
careful  comparison  with  that  made  on  others ;  above 
all,  content  to  let  the  subject  of  his  work  speak  for 
himself,  in  his  own  words,  and  almost  in  his  own 
tones,  as  Arnold  speaks  in  his  letters  and  journals, 
and  to  keep  his  own  impressions,  his  own  views,  as 
carefully  in  the  background  as  Stanley  keeps  his  in 
that  memorable  Biography. 

But  what  was  the  effect  of  Arnold  on  himself?  Did 
the  influence  of  so  commanding  and  overpowering  a 
character  dwarf  his  own  genius,  de-individualise  — 
if  I  may  coin  the  word — the  individual  Stanley,  or 
unduly  affect  and  modify  his  course  and  character  ? 


38  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  i. 

Should  we,  but  for  Arnold,  have  had  something  other, 
something  perhaps  better,  something  perhaps  worse, 
but  something  different  to  what  we  had  in  Stanley  ? 
Similar  questions  may  occur  as  to  all  lives.  Like 
analogous  questions  in  the  history  of  nations,  they  are 
always  hard  to  answer.  The  influence,  no  doubt,  of 
his  teacher  was  enormous  over  his  mind  in  youth.  He 
was  quite  conscious  of  it  then  and  afterwards.  "  Ar- 
nold at  Rugby,"  he  said,  late  in  life,  "  was  my  idol  and 
oracle,  both  in  one.  Afterwards,  well  — he  was  not 
exactly  my  oracle,  but  I  reverenced  him  wholly  to  the 
end  —  I  have  never  felt  such  reverence  for  any  one 
since."  In  that  most  moving  of  sermons,  preached 
near  Stanley's  open  grave,  the  Vaughan  of  whom  he 
spoke  with  such  chivalrous  affection  nearly  fifty  years 
before,  recalled  his  friend's  rapt  countenance  as  he 
listened  to  his  master's  sermons  —  his  entire  absorp- 
tion, as  he  went  straight  from  the  chapel  to  his  study 
to  transcribe  his  impressions  of  those  memorable  dis- 
courses. Speaking  at  Baltimore  in  1878,  "the  lapse 
of  years,"  he  said,  "has  only  served  to  deepen  in  me  the 
conviction  that  no  gift  can  be  more  valuable  than  the 
recollection  and  the  inspiration  of  a  great  character 
working  on  our  own.  I  hope  that  you  may  all  experi- 
ence this  at  some  time  of  your  life  as  I  have  done." 
And  he  was  quite  alive  to  it  while  it  was  in  full  force. 
"  What  a  wonderful  influence,"  he  says,  in  a  letter 
written  while  still  at  Rugby,  "  that  man  has  over  me ! 
I  certainly  feel  that  I  have  hardly  a  free  will  of  my  own 
on  any  subject  on  which  he  has  written  or  spoken. 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUR  PENRUTN  STANLEY.  39 

It  is,  I  suppose,"  he  goes  on  to  say,  "  a  weak  and  un- 
natural state  to  be  in ;  for,"  he  adds,  with  instinctive 
insight,  "  I  do  not  at  all  consider  myself  to  be  naturally 
of  the  same  frame  as  he  is ; "  and,  curiously  enough,  a 
great  part  of  a  long  letter  to  the  same  correspondent 
is  filled  with  a  remarkably  bold  and  searching  criticism 
of  a  striking  hymn,  written  by  his  great  teacher,  of 
which  he  had  obtained  possession.  Indeed,  no  two 
men  could  have  been  in  many  points  more  unlike 
each  other.  In  stature,  in  manners,  in  appearance, 
in  voice,  in  conversational  powers,  in  much  of  their 
general  tone  of  mind,  the  difference  between  them 
amounted  almost  to  contrast;  and  however  strong 
were  the  bonds  of  sympathy  and  agreement  on  the 
most  important  subjects,  however  undying  the  effects 
of  that  contact  with  so  vigorous  and  impressive  a 
teacher  in  the  most  impressible  stage  of  the  pupil's 
life,  yet  those  who  knew  them  both  are  not  very  careful 
to  answer  otherwise  than  with  a  smile  of  incredulity 
the  suggestion  that  Stanley  was  in  any  way  the  crea- 
tion of  his  teacher.  What'difference  might  have  been 
made  by  the  subtraction,  so  to  speak,  of  the  Arnoldian 
element  from  the  Stanley  whom  they  knew,  they  can- 
not say.  But  they  feel  quite  sure  that  he  had  a  genius 
all  his  own,  and  an  individuality,  and  an  independence 
and  a  power  of  marking  out  his  own  course,  not  infe- 
rior to  that  of  his  master.  And  considering  his  early 
training  and  home  influences,  and  still  more  the  whole 
temperament  and  constitution  of  his  mind,  they  will 
greatly  question  whether,  after  whatever  periods  of 


40  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  i. 

temporary  oscillation,  the  ultimate  bent  and  direction 
of  the  forces  which  marked  his  genius  and  character, 
would  have  been  very  different  to  what  they  were, 
even  had  his  father  shrunk  from  entrusting  him  to  the 
then  untried  world  of  that  Warwickshire  Grammar 
School,  and  placed  him  in  the  more  familiar  atmos- 
phere of  "  Commoners  "  at  Winchester. 

In  all  this  I  am  puprosely  anticipating.  Let  me 
now  return  to  the  narrative  of  his  life. 

In  1834  he  was  fairly  launched  on  his  undergradu- 
ate career.  It  was  an  eventful  time  at  Oxford.  The 
dominant  religious  influences  of  the  place  were  be- 
coming every  year  more  antagonistic  to  those  under 
which  his  boyhood  had  been  passed.  The  watchwords 
of  "Church  Authority,"  "Apostolical  Succession," 
"The  Primitive  Church,"  "  Sacramental  Grace,"  were 
to  be  heard  on  all  sides.  The  views  which  they  repre- 
sented were  being  urged  in  sermons,  in  tracts,  in  conver- 
sation, above  all  from  the  pulpit,  by  the  most  persua- 
sive of  lips  and  the  purest  of  lives.  Their  effect  on  the 
life  of  Oxford  has  been  described,  in  a  manner  which 
I  shall  not  attempt  to  emulate,  by  Principal  Shairp,* 
himself  somewhat  later  a  member  of  the  same  Col- 
lege as  Arthur  Stanley.  Their  influence  on  the  reli- 
gious history  of  the  nation  has  yet  to  be  fully  estimated. 
How  far  the  theological  atmosphere  in  which  he  now 
lived  temporarily  affected  him,  one  who  was  a  school- 
boy at  the  time  will  hardly  venture  to  say;  but 
among  his  most  intimate  friends  were  more  than 

*  In  a  paper  on  Keble  in  "  Studies  on  Poetry  and  Philosophy." 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  41 

one  of  those  who  afterwards  became  the  leaders  of  a 
movement  in  which  he  certainly  never  joined ;  and 
there  is  no  doubt  that,  while  still  an  undergraduate, 
he  felt  the  keenest  interest  in  the  defence  of  Dr., 
afterwards  Bishop,  Hampden,  whose  appointment  to 
the  Regius  chair  of  Theology  provoked  a  storm,  the 
first  of  a  long  series  that  later  on  convulsed  the  English 
Church.  He  was  actually,  there  is  reason  to  believe, 
privately  consulted  by  Lord  Melbourne  himself,  whose 
short  but  characteristic  encomium  on  his  young  adviser 
need  not  be  repeated.  Doubtless  even  his  active  mind 
and  indomitable  power  of  work  were  largely  absorbed 
by  his  necessary  reading.  In  a  letter  to  his  eldest 
brother,  written  while  reading  at  Oxford  during  his 
last  summer  vacation,  he  speaks  of  "  looking  forward 
to  November  to  free  me  at  once  and  for  ever  from 
the  great  burden  which  has  been  hanging  over  me  for 
the  last  three  years."  He  was  by  no  means  what  is 
called  a  heaven-born  scholar,  in  the  technical  sense  of 
the  word.  In  Greek  and  Latin  composition  he  had 
been  always  easily  distanced  at  Rugby  by  his  friend 
Vaughan,  and  for  the  more  abstract  branches  of  mental 
philosophy,  so  congenial  to  the  Scottish  mind,  he  had 
no  special  turn.  He  used  to  amuse  his  Oxford  pupils 
by  recounting  his  laborious  efforts  to  attain  sufficient 
excellence  in  Latin  verse-writing,  in  which  he  never 
greatly  excelled,  to  allow  him  to  obtain,  as  he  did 
at  last  by  the  excellence  of  other  work,  the  Ireland 
Scholarship  —  the  highest  distinction  offered  by  the 
University  for  Greek  and  Latin  scholarship  j  and  he 


42  EECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  i. 

would  enlarge  on  the  debt  which  he  owed  to  the  pres- 
ent Bishop  of  St.  Albans,  who,  as  his  private  tutor, 
assisted  him  greatly  to  overcome  this  special  deficiency. 
The  most  interesting  achievement  of  his  under- 
graduate days  was  a  poem  for  which  in  1837  he  won 
the  Newdigate  prize.  Its  subject  was  "  The  Gipsies," 
and  it  seems  to  me  to  be  separated  by  a  marked  and 
distinct  line  from  all  his  earlier  literary  efforts  (set- 
ting aside  passages  in  private  letter  or  journals)  which 
I  have  yet  seen,  and  to  bear  the  true  stamp  of  the 
mature  Stanley,  such  as  his  later  friends  and  the 
world  at  large  have  known  him.  It  is  not  only  that  it 
is  something  far  more  than  an  unusually  meritorious 
prize  poem,  and  contains  touches  of  description  drawn 
from  natural  scenery,  such  as  a  true  poet  would  gladly 
claim  to  have  written  at  his  age.  Such  lines,  for 
instance,  as  — 

"  The  changeful  smiles,  the  living  face  of  light, 
The  steady  gaze  of  the  still  solemn  night; 
Bright  lakes,  the  glistening  eyes  of  solitude, 
Girt  with  grey  cliffs  and  folds  of  mighty  wood," 

though  possibly  within  the  reach  of  one  who,  without 
high  poetic  gifts,  had  saturated  himself  with  the  works 
of  first-class  poets,  are  something  more  than  the  patch- 
work phrases  of  a  skilled  versifier.  Nor  is  it  only 
that  when,  with  a  reference  in  a  footnote  to  Lamar- 
tine's  pilgrimage  to  the  Holy  Land,  he  speaks  of — 

"  The  meteor  light 
Of  Syrian  skies  by  Zion's  to\very  height," 

he  foreshadows  his  own  more  fruitful  visits  to  that 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUR  PENEHTN  STANLEY.  43 

sacred  soil.  But  when  those  who  are  familiar  with 
his  later  writings  read  his  description  of  the  — 

"  Dark  and  troublous  time  — 
The  Heaven  all  gloom,  the  wearied  Earth  all  crime," 

that  ushered  in  the  fifteenth  century ;  or  the  coup- 
lets that  follow,  beginning  with  — 

"  A  stranger  people,  'mid  that  murky  gloom, 
Knocked  at  the  gates  of  awe-struck  Christendom ;  " 

we  feel  that  "  the  boy  "  has  already  become  "  father 
of  the  man."  So  again,  after  breathing  the  very 
spirit  of  romance  and  poetry  into  the  various  legends 
that  hung  round  the  origin  of  that  strange  people,  as 
for  instance,  in  the  words  — 

"  Heard  ye  the  nations  heave  their  long  last  groans 
Amidst  the  crash  of  Asia's  thousand  thrones," 

he  lingers  over  the  tradition,  destitute  as  it  is  of  all 
historical  value,  of  their  representing  the  old  Egyp- 
tian race,  and  thus  living  as  degraded  wanderers  by 
the  side  of  their  ancient  Hebrew  bondservants,  in 
such  lines  as  — 

"  Remnant  of  ages,  from  thy  glory  cast, 
Dread  link  between  the  present  and  the  past  — 

***** 

One  only  race  amid  thy  dread  compeers 
Still  moves  with  thee  along  this  vale  of  tears ; 
Long  since  ye  parted  by  the  Red  Sea's  strand, 
Now  face  to  face  ye  meet  in  every  land. 
Alone  arnkl  a  new-born  world  ye  dwell  — 
Egypt's  lorn  people,  outcast  Israel!  " 

As  we  read  such  passages,  we  feel  that  we  are  at 
once  transported  into  the  very  centre  of  the  familiar 


44  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  i. 

thoughts  and  imagery  of  the  Stanley  that  was  to  be : 
that  if  the  voice  is  the  voice  of-  the  young  under- 
graduate, still  toiling  for  his  degree,  the  words  and  the 
ideas  are  those  of  the  writer  who  was  one  day  almost  to 
re-create  large  fields  of  sacred  and  ecclesiastical  history 
by  clothing  them  with  a  fresh  glow  of  life  and  colour. 

It  is  interesting  to  add  that  the  poem  as  it  stands 
bears  traces,  as  we  know  from  the  writer,  of  correc- 
tions introduced  by  the  author  of  the  "  Christian 
Year,"  who  then  held  the  Professorship  of  Poetry ;  it 
contains  also  a  reference,  perhaps  the  earliest  that 
appeared  in  print,  to  a  line  from  an  early  poem  of 
the  present  Poet  Laureate,  whose  name,  however, 
was  not  given,  and  which  the  poet  Keble  supposed 
to  be  a  quotation  from  Shakespeare. 

His  career  as  an  undergraduate  of  Balliot  was  now  at 
an  end ;  his  First  Class  obtained,  his  degree  taken.  The 
burden  was  lifted  from  his  shoulders,  and  with  character 
consolidated,  and  many  warm  and  lasting  friendships 
formed,  he  stood  on  the  threshold  of  mature  manhood. 

A  Fellowship  at  his  own  College  would  have  seemed 
the  natural  sequel  in  the  academical  life  of  one  of  the 
most  distinguished  of  her  sons ;  one  whose  character 
was  as  spotless  as  his  career  had  been  exceptionally 
brilliant.  But  it  will  hardly  be  believed  in  Edinburgh, 
it  will  scarcely  be  credited  in  modern  Oxford,  that  so 
strong  was  the  feeling  among  the  older  and  ruling 
members  of  that  society  against  admitting  to  their  cir- 
cle the  son  of  such  a  Bishop  as  Bishop  Stanley,  and  the 
sympathizing  pupil  of  Thomas  Arnold,  that  he  was 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUR  PENEHYN  STANLEY.  45 

privately  given  to  understand  that  his  chance  of  elec- 
tion at  his  own  College  was  too  small  to  warrant  him  in 
exposing  himself  to  a  repulse.  The  moment  was  seized 
by  the  keen-sighted  dexterity  of  one  still  living,  then 
an  active  and  influential  tutor  of  University  College  — 
let  me  once  more  thank  him  here !  —  and  in  the  year 
1839  Arthur  Stanley  was  elected  Fellow  of  that  Col- 
lege ;  an  event  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  of  far  greater 
importance  to  the  welfare  of  that  ancient  society, 
which  claims  King  Alfred  for  its  founder,  than  any 
that  had  befallen  it  for  at  least  a  century.  In  the  same 
year  his  dear  and  life-long  Balliol  friend,  Benjamin 
Jowett,  now  the  Master  of  Balliol,  was  elected,  while 
still  an  undergraduate,  to  a  Fellowship  in  his  own  Col- 
lege ;  and  before  it  closed,  Arthur  Stanley  had,  after  a 
period  of  some  perplexity  and  hesitation,  taken  a  step 
to  which  he  had  steadily  looked  forward  from  his  Rug- 
by days,  and  which  he  never  for  a  moment  regretted, 
and  had  been  ordained  deacon  by  the  Bishop  of  Oxford. 
He  had  now  fully  resolved  to  give  his  life,  for  the 
present  at  least,  to  the  work  of  a  College  Tutor  at  Ox- 
ford. But  before  plunging  into  educational  work,  he 
resided  for  a  time  as  junior  Fellow,  occupying  himself 
in  study,  in  learning  the  elements  of  Hebrew,  attend- 
ing with  great  interest  Dr.  Pusey's  lectures,  and  in 
writing  an  Essay,  which  obtained  the  Chancellor's 
Prize,  on  a  congenial  historical  subject.  It  is  a  com- 
position which  almost  deserves  to  be  placed  beside  his 
prize  poem.  Would  that  time  allowed  me  to  quote  to 
you  the  eloquent  and  most  characteristic  page  with 


46  RECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  i. 

which  it  closes.  Meantime,  important  changes  had 
taken  place  in  his  family  circle.  His  father  and  family 
had  removed  to  Norwich,  and  were  established  in  their 
new  home  in  the  Bishop's  Palace.  His  sailor-brother 
Owen  had  accompanied  Captain  Back  as  scientific  offi- 
cer on  his  adventurous  voyage  in  the  Terror  to  the 
Arctic  seas,  and  struggling  back  with  a  scurvy-stricken 
crew,  in  a  battered  ship  only  kept  from  going  to  pieces 
by  under-girding  her  with  iron  chains,  had  reached  at 
last  the  wild  but  friendly  shores  of  Lough  S  willy  on  the 
night  of  the  3rd  of  September,  1837.  There,  for  the 
first  time,  the  young  officer  heard  to  his  great  dismay 
that  the  Alderley  home  was  broken  up.  The  removal 
had  already  taken  place.  While  it  was  in  contempla- 
tion Arthur  Stanley,  still  an  undergraduate,  had  stolen 
two  days  in  term  time  to  visit  his  father  in  London. 
"  It  was,"  he  writes,  "  a  most  trying  time.  I  should 
hardly  have  known  my  father's  face,  so  worn  as  he 
was  with  the  anxiety  of  the  week  before  in  making  up 
his  mind  to  the  decision."  "But,"  he  writes,  after  a 
visit  paid  in  September  to  Norwich,  "I  do  not  repent 
of  it  now;  he  seems  much  freer  and  happier  than  he 
ever  did  before."  In  the  same  letter,  addressed  to  his 
brother  on  board  H.M.S.  Terror,  he  gives  a  character- 
istic account  of  their  new  home,  contrasting  the  ugli- 
ness of  the  Palace  with  the  surpassing  beauty  of  the 
Cathedral  that  overshadows  it.  "The  former  is," 
says  the  yet  untravelled  traveller,  "among  houses  what 
Moscow  is,  I  should  think,  among  cities.  Rooms  which 
one  may  really  call  very  fine  side  by  side  with  the 


CHAP,  i.]        ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  47 

meanest  of  passages  and  staircases.  By  the  riverside," 
he  characteristically  writes,  "  is  a  ruin  where  a  Bishop 
once  killed  a  wolf ;  over  the  river,  a  road  down  which 
another  Bishop  marched  with  6000  men  at  arms ; " 
and  he  assures  his  brother  that  he  is  highly  flattered 
by  his  having  carried  the  remembrance  of  the  Hamp- 
den  controversy  with  him  through  the  Arctic  winter. 
"  That  storm,"  he  says,  "  is  laid ;  in  fact,  its  place  is 
taken  in  the  newspapers  by  the  installation  sermon 
of  the  Bishop  of  Norwich."  The  letter  is  dated  Sep- 
tember 22, 1837,  and  concludes  with  a  fear  that  "these 
full  particulars  of  Norwich  life  may  give  you  the  idea, 
which  they  say  at  home  is  the  case,  that  I  am  the 
only  one  puffed  up  by  the  accession  of  dignity." 

May  I  be  allowed  to  insert  here  what  is  to  myself 
something  more  than  a  slight  personal  reminiscence? 
It  was  after  his  migration  from  Balliol,  that  it  became 
the  duty  of  the  new  Fellow  of  University,  early  in  the 
year  1840,  to  take  part  in  the  annual  Scholarship 
Examination,  which  ended  in  the  election  of  a  Rugby 
schoolboy,  the  first  of  many  whom  his  rising  fame  drew 
not  from  Rugby  onljr,  to  a  College  which  had  so  wisely 
added  to  its  teaching  staff  so  attractive  and  magnetic  an 
influence.  More  than  t \vo-and-forty  years  have  passed 
since  on  that  bright  March  afternoon  the  loud  con- 
gratulations of  old  friends  and  schoolfellows  were 
hushed  for  a  moment  as  the  young  Examiner  stepped 
into  the  quadrangle  and  turned  to  greet  the  new 
scholar.  How  well  does  he  recall  that  kindly  greet- 
ing— the  hearty  grasp  of  the  friendly  hand  that  seemed 


48  RECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  i. 

to  carry  the  heart  in  it — the  bright  expressive  coun- 
tenance of  the  young  tutor,  so  full  of  all  that  might 
win  and  charm  a  somewhat  imaginative  schoolboy, 
which  shines  still  out  of  the  distance  in  all  its  first 
youthful  beauty  "  as  the  face  of  an  angel."  He  at 
once  invited  the  newly  elected  scholar  to  take  a  walk 
with  him  on  his  return  from  a  formal  visit  to  the 
Master  of  the  College,  and  that  dull  road  that  led  out 
by  the  then  implanted,  unreclaimed,  Oxford  Parks,  is 
still  lit  in  the  memory  of  him  who  trod  it  by  his  side, 
with  something  fairer  than  the  bright  March  sun 
which  shone  across  it.  "  We  are  walking,"  he  said, 
"  towards  Rugby,"  and  at  once  placed  his  companion 
at  his  ease  by  questions  about  his  friends  there,  and 
about  the  Master  who  was  the  object  of  as  enthusi- 
astic a  devotion  to  the  younger  as  to  the  older  Rug- 
beian.  How  little  did  it  occur  to  either,  as  they 
parted,  how  strangely  near  their  lives  were  to  be  drawn 
to  each  other !  The  younger  might  have  listened  to 
a  soothsayer  who  had  said,  "You  have  won  to-day 
something  that  you  will  soon  count  far  more  precious 
than  the  scholarship  in  which  you  are  exulting:"  but 
how  contemptuously  would  he  have  turned  from  the 
prediction  that  he  would  years  after  be  called  from 
the  headship  of  the  College  of  which  he  was  that 
day  enrolled  as  the  youngest  member,  to  succeed,  in 
his  new  friend,  not  the  least  illustrious  and  the  most 
lamented  of  the  Deans  of  Westminster.  It  is  in 
virtue  of  the  friendship  of  which  that  day  was  the 
birthday  that  1  have  stood  before  you  this  evening. 


CHAP,  ii.]       ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  49 


CHAPTER  II. 

(From  1840  to  1863.) 
OXFORD  —  CANTERBURY  —  OXFORD. 

"TN  the  autumn  of  the  same  year  Arthur  Stanley  left 
-  England  for  a  tour  in  Greece  and  Italy.  The  tour 
was  so  far  memorable  that  it  encouraged  and  con- 
firmed the  taste  for  foreign  travel,  implanted  first  of 
all  by  that  early  visit  to  the  South  of  France,  which 
he  never  lost.  He  suffered,  as  travellers  at  that  time 
were  sure  to  suffer,  from  occasional  personal  discom- 
forts. "  At  Athens,"  he  said  in  later  life,  "  I  felt  the 
cold  of  winter  more  than  I  ever  did ;  at  St.  Peters- 
burg least  of  all."  But  he  had  already  mastered  the 
art  of  extracting  a  fund  of  amusement  from  such  pass- 
ing trials,  and  his  companion,  the  present  Dean  of 
Norwich,  was  a  man  of  most  kindly  heart  and  unfail- 
ing humour.  In  spite  therefore  of  all  drawbacks,  he 
drank  deep  of  the  delights  of  moving  about  from  day 
to  day  among  the  scenes  of  Greek  history  and  poetry, 
and  he  became  conscious  in  himself  and  revealed  more 
fully  to  his  friends  a  power  of  bringing  before  the 
minds  of  others  such  pictures  of  scenes  which  most 


50  RECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  n. 

interested  him  as,  when  their  number  and  their  variety 
are  taken  into  account,  have  rarely,  if  ever,  been  sur- 
passed in  English  literature.  A  long  letter  which  he 
wrote  to  Dr.  Arnold,  in  which  he  dwells  on  some  of 
the  main  characteristics  of  Greek  scenery,  deserves  to 
be  placed  side  by  side  with  the  most  striking  of  the 
descriptive  passages  in  his  later  writings. 

It  is  possible  that  a  few  words  on  that  which  forms 
so  marked  an  element  in  all  his  writings,  his  attitude 
as  regards  natural  scenery,  may  be  of  interest  here 
as  a  contribution  to  a  right  estimate  alike  of  his 
literary  position  and  of  the  pervading  tone  and  col- 
our of  his  mind. 

Scenery  in  and  for  itself,  the  aspects  of  Nature  as 
viewed  in  their  own  light  and  for  their  own  sakes,  he 
never,  I  think  I  am  right  in  saying,  never  once  at- 
tempts to  describe.  In  one  of  his  letters  to  an  old 
pupil,  written  at  Canterbury  in  1854,  there  is  a  pas- 
sage which  gives  the  key  alike  to  the  excellences  and 
the  deficiencies  of  this  great  painter  of  Nature.  "  I  can- 
not think,"  he  says,  "that  mere  effusions  of  emotion 
at  the  transient  blushes  of  Nature  deserve  an  ever- 
lasting record.  I  feel  about  such  effusions,  almost  as 
I  feel  about  my  present,  oftentimes  ineffectual,  la- 
bours at  reproducing  scenes  of  my  travels  "  (he  was 
then  at  work  at  "  Sinai  and  Palestine  "),  "  that  they 
are  not  worth  publishing,  except  as  a  framework  to 
events  or  ideas  of  greater  magnitude."  Of  Nature,  as 
studied  for  her  own  sake,  in  the  spirit  of  Wordsworth, 
or  so  many  true  poets  in  all  ages,  or  of  Mr.  Ruskin 


CHAP,  ii.]       ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  51 

among  modern  prose  writers,  there  will  be  found,  I 
venture  to  say,  no  trace  in  his  published  writings  or  in 
his  letters  since  he  grew  to  manhood.  Whenever  he 
becomes  enthusiastic  on  the  beauties  of  nature,  we  may 
feel  sure  that  there  is  alwaj^s  at  work  a  motive  other 
than  that  of  the  artist — that  behind  nature  lies  some 
human  or  historical  interest.  "  How  mysterious,"  he 
says,  in  a  letter  to  a  younger  friend,  then  at  Rome, 
"  the  Alban  lake !  How  beautiful  Nemi !  how  roman- 
tic Subiaco !  how  solemn  Ostia !  how  desolate  Gabii ! " 
What  could  be  better  ?  you  will  say.  Yes ;  but  behind 
all  these,  there  lay  on  his  mental  retina  the  background 
of  the  history  of  Rome  —  "  the  one  only  place,"  he  goes 
on  to  say,  "  in  the  whole  world,  that  is  absolutely  in- 
exhaustible ! "  It  is  quite  true  that  occasionally,  in 
some  three,  or  four,  or  five  remarkable  passages,  oc- 
curring especially,  and  for  an  obvious  reason,  in  his 
American  addresses,  he  introduces  pictures  of  some 
natural  phenomena,  quite  apart  from  any  direct  his- 
torical association.  Such  is  the  splendid  picture  of  the 
Falls  of  Niagara ;  the  graceful  and  touching  image,  a 
true  sonnet  in  prose,  drawn  from  two  trees,  the  grace- 
ful maple  and  the  gnarled  and  twisted  oak,  growing 
side  by  side ;  the  description  of  the  course  of  the  St. 
Lawrence  as  contrasted  with  that  of  the  Nile ;  of  sun- 
rise, as  seen  from  the  summit  of  the  Righi.  B  ut  in  each 
of  these  apparent  exceptions  to  his  ordinary  habit,  he 
seizes  on  some  aspect  of  external  nature,  not  for  its  own 
sake,  but  as  the  symbol  of  some  idea — some  truth, 
that  he  wishes  to  enforce  or  interpret.  As  a  general 


52  RECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  n. 

rule,  he  looks  on  nature  not  as  a  poetical  interpreter 
of  nature — not,  we  may  fairly  say,  as  a  poet  in  the 
truest  sense — but  as  one  who  seems  never  to  feel  that 
he  has  thoroughly  mastered  any  event,  or  chain  of 
events,  in  human  or  sacred  history,  till  he  has  seen  the 
spot,  and  breathed  the  air  which  gives  to  each  occur- 
rence its  peculiar  and  local  colouring.  And  with  what 
an  eye  he  sees  it !  with  what  a  power  of  insight  and 
discrimination  he  reproduces  the  exact  points  in  which 
nature  and  history  meet  and  blend  with,  and  mutually 
influence,  each  other !  "  We  go,"  he  said  in  his  Ser- 
mons in  the  East,  "  to  the  Jerusalem  where  Christ  died 
and  rose  again.  To  see  that  Holy  City,  even  though 
the  exact  spots  of  His  death  and  resurrection  are  un- 
known, is  to  give  a  new  force  to  the  sound  of  the  Name, 
whenever  afterwards  we  hear  it  in  Church,  or  read  it 
in  the  Bible."  The  words  apply  in  their  first  sense  to 
the  most  sacred  of  all  lands,  and  of  all  scenes.  But  the 
feeling  that  dictated  them  is  the  key  to  something  else, 
to  the  unwearied,  the  insatiable  avidity  —  I  can  call 
it  nothing  less  —  with  which  he  would  fatigue  the  most 
indefatigable  of  fellow  travellers  or  hosts,  by  visiting 
any  and  every  spot,  however  apparently  insignificant, 
which  was  connected,  directly  or  indirectly,  with  any 
historical  event  or  person,  or  with  any  scene  in  the 
works  of  the  great  masters  of  poetry  or  fiction,  or  even 
with  any  important  legend  that  had  ever  influenced  the 
human  mind.  "  At  Lindisfarne,"  says  one  who  vis- 
ited it  with  him,  "  his  mind  was,  I  am  sure,  quite  as 
much  occupied  with  the  immurement  of  Constance, 


CHAP,  ii.]       ARTHUR  PENRHTN  STANLEY.  53 

as  with  the  memory  of  St.  Aidan  and  St.  Cuthbert." 
Tours  was  to  him  quite  as  much  associated  with 
Quentin  Durward  as  with  St.  Martin,  or  with  Hilde- 
garde,  or  Louis  XI.,  or  Henry  II.  His  persistence  in 
dragging  a  fellow  traveller  to  call  on  the  Archbishop 
of  Granada  was  based  quite  as  much  on  his  being  the 
lineal  successor  of  the  master  of  Gil  Bias,  as  on  his 
being  the  occupant  of  that  historic  see.  And  the  keen 
eye  for  detecting  resemblances  and  points  of  agreement 
under  superficial  or  real  differences,  that  gave  such  a 
character  to  his  whole  treatment  of  history  and  of 
theology,  followed  him  also  in  his  visits  to  historic 
places.  As  he  saw  an  analogy  to  the  yet  unvisited 
Moscow  in  his  new  home  in  Norwich,  so  he  delighted 
to  point  out  the  seven  hills  of  Rome  in  the  same  city. 
He  was  not  content  with  recognising  in  this  your 
famous  capital  the  resemblance  —  the  modified  resem- 
blance, which  I  have  already  quoted  —  to  Athens; 
he  found  in  the  relation  of  the  new  to  the  old  town 
something  which  reminded  him  of  a  place  so  unlike 
Edinburgh  as  Prague. 

Let  me  add  that  in  the  same  spirit  in  which  before 
his  tour  to  the  Holy  Land  he  read  through  and 
through  all  that  he  could  find  worth  reading  on  Pal- 
estine, so  he  would  visit  no  place,  not  even  in  the 
suburbs  of  London,  or  a  rail  way  junction  in  Scotland, 
without  learning  all  that  he  could  of  its  history  or 
associations.  A  curious  feature  of  his  travelling 
mind  —  if  I  may  so  speak  —  was  that  for  many  years 
of  his  life  he  did  not  care,  indeed  rather  objected,  to 


54  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  n. 

see  the  same  scene  twice.  "  When  once,"  he  said, 
"  I  have  seen  a  remarkable  sight,  I  do  not  care  to  see 
it  again,  unless  it  is  one  with  which  fond  or  happy 
associations  are  connected."  "The  second  sight  of 
Prague  quite  revolted  me,"  he  added,  with  comic 
energy;  "and  though  I  saw  Marathon  on  a  rainy 
day,  yet  I  refused  three  or  four  opportunities  of  see- 
ing it  again.  On  the  first  sight  of  scenes  of  this  sort 
a  whole  new  world  opens  before  me ;  floods  of  thought 
come  in,  which  are  indelible,  and  there  is  nothing  new 
in  a  second  visit." 

And  now  let  me  return  to  his  personal  history.  At 
the  conclusion  of  his  tour  in  Greece,  he  wrote  the  let- 
ter to  Dr.  Arnold  to  which  I  have  already  referred, 
in  solitude,  or  worse  than  solitude.  His  fellow  suf- 
ferers under  the  miseries  of  a  Maltese  quarantine,  were 
some  young  men,  whose  loose  talk  revolted  him,  and 
who  had  not  the  good  sense  to  discover  that  beneath 
the  mask  of  that  averted  countenance  and  those  silent 
lips,  was  one,  to  enjoy  whose  society  and  conversation 
many  wiser  than  themselves  would  have  gladly  faced 
the  horrors  of  that  tedious  imprisonment.  Released 
at  last,  he  arrived  alone  at  Naples,  depressed,  home- 
sick, and  yearning  for  some  congenial  society.  In  the 
Museum  he  met  an  English  acquaintance,  who  said, 
"Of  course  you  have  seen  Hugh  Pearson?"  mention- 
ing the  name  of  one  of  his  closest  Balliol  friends. 
"  Hugh  Pearson  !  "  he  exclaimed ;  "  where  is  he  ?  " 
and  darted  in  search  of  him.  He  found  him  in  front 
of  a  well-known  statue,  rushed  up  to  him,  and,  over- 


CHAP,  n.]       ARTHUR  PENEHTN  STANLEY.  55 

come  with  joy  and  emotion,  fell  into  his  friend's  arms 
with  a  burst  of  uncontrollable  tears.  I  mention  the 
incident,  not  merely  as  illustrative  of  his  tender  and 
affectionate  nature,  which  never  lost  a  spark  of  its 
youthful  warmth  till  the  hand  relaxed  its  clasp,  and 
the  heart  had  ceased  to  beat,  but  because  the  com- 
panion whom  he  then  found,  and  with  whom  he  com- 
pleted his  homeward  journey,  became  from  that  time 
the  very  closest  and  most  inseparable  of  all  his  friends. 

When  sorrowing  mourners  gathered  in  April  last 
round  the  grave  of  that  friend,  from  whom  death  h^d 
severed  him  for  a  time,  there  was  one  feeling  in  many 
hearts  —  that  they  had  lost  one  who,  beyond  any  liv- 
ing person,  was  in  full  possession  of  the  whole  soul 
of  him  to  whom  death  had  re-united  him  —  that  the 
most  trustworthy,  the  most  intimate,  the  most  con- 
tinuous of  the  authorities  for  the  history  of  Arthur 
Stanley,  had  passed  into  the  world  beyond  the  grave, 
in  the  person  of  his  friend  Hugh  Pearson. 

He  returned  to  Oxford  in  the  autumn  of  1841,  and 
soon  after  became  Lecturer,  and  in  due  time  Tutor 
and  Dean  of  his  new  College,  where  he  resided  con- 
tinuously, or  nearly  so,  till  his  removal  to  Canterbury. 

This  perhaps  is  the  place  to  speak  of  his  life  as  an 
Oxford  tutor,  the  capacity  in  which  I,  and  many 
others  of  his  most  devoted  friends,  first  knew  him.  Yet, 
in  speaking  to  an  audience  north  of  the  Tweed,  there 
maybe  some  difficulty  in  bringing  before  you  what  that 
life  really  was.  But  you  are  perhaps  aware  that  until 
quite  lately  every  Oxford  student  —  though  the  word 


56  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  n. 

"  student "  in  this  technical  sense  is  unknown  on  the 
banks  of  the  Isis — passed  three  years  of  his  academ- 
ical life  within  the  walls  of  one  of  about  a  score  of  Col- 
leges. Of  these  Colleges  —  each  contained  within  a 
separate,  more  or  less  imposing,  block  of  stone-built 
buildings,  with  its  own  chapel,  its  own  dining-hall,  its 
own  library,  its  own  lecture  rooms  —  the  University 
practically  consisted.  Each  College  was  under  the 
separate  government  of  its  own  head —  Master,  War- 
den, Provost,  Principal,  President,  as  the  case  might  be 
—  and  its  own  fellows  and  tutors ;  and  each  contained 
its  own  group  of  undergraduate  students.  The  Uni- 
versity, by  which  all  degrees  were  conferred,  was 
represented  by  disciplinary  and  other  authorities,  by 
examiners,  and  by  professors.  But  at  the  time  of  which 
I  speak,  professorial  lectures  had,  with  few  exceptions, 
fallen  into  almost  entire  abeyance ;  and  the  instruction 
which  undergraduates  received  was  given  within  the 
walls  of  their  own  College,  supplemented  often  by  pri- 
vate tuition  from  teachers  whom  they  selected  at  their 
will  and  remunerated  from  their  own  resources. 

The  position,  therefore,  of  a  College  tutor,  living  in 
rooms  among-  his  pupils,  waited  on  by  the  same  ser- 
vants, attending  daily  the  same  chapel  services,  dining 
at  the  same  hour  in  the  same  hall,  was — may  I  not  say 
still  is? — one  singularly  fitted  to  open  a  field  for  use- 
fulness to  those  who  have  the  rare  gift  of  influencing 
young  men.  Into  the  duties  and  opportunities  of  this 
position  Stanley  threw  himself  with  all  the  ardour  of 
his  nature,  and  the  impression  that  he  made  and  the 


CHAP,  ii.]       ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  57 

work  which  he  achieved  was,  at  the  time,  unexampled. 
It  can  only  be  understood  by  those  who  are  familiar 
with  the  influence  gained  by  the  almost  life-long  labours 
of  his  own  almost  life-long  friend,  Professor  Jowett,  now 
Vice-Chancellor  of  the  University  of  Oxford,  at  a  Col- 
lege better  known  in  Edinburgh  than  that  to  which 
the  scholar  of  Balliol  had  migrated.  As  compared  with 
that  friend,  Stanley  had  no  doubt  some  drawbacks  as  a 
tutor.  "  I  am  no  moral  philosopher  or  metaphysician," 
he  said  of  himself  later.  His  interest  in  the  minuter 
shades  of  philological  scholarship  was  never  very  keen. 
No  man  knew  better  his  own  weak  points.  But  the  page 
of  History,  ancient,  modern,  or  sacred,  was  to  him,  in  the 
truest  sense  of  the  words, "  rich  with  the  spoils  of  time ; " 
and  he  knew  how  to  make  that  page  glow  with  the 
light  of  wisdom  and  of  poetry,  and  to  aid  his  pupils  to 
regard  those  spoils  as  very  treasures.  How  well  two  or 
three  of  us  must  remember  that  well-marked  Herodotus 
which  he  freely  lent  us.  It  had  its  special  marks  in 
coloured  lines  to  indicate,  first,  passages  noteworthy 
for  the  Greek ;  secondly,  passages  bearing  on  Greek 
history,  or  on  the  time  of  Herodotus ;  thirdly,  passages 
containing  truths  for  all  time.  He  was  already  giving 
himself  to  the  study  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments 
with  an  enthusiasm  which  never  left  him,  and  which  he 
was  able  to  communicate  to  one  after  another  of  those 
who  came  under  his  influence.  Even  now  there  are 
those  who,  in  East-end  parishes,  in  country  villages, 
in  far-off  Missionary  stations,  as  well  as  in  what  are 
called  the  high  places  of  the  Church,  feel  the  impulse 


58  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  n. 

which  they  then  received  from  him.  So  keen  was  the 
interest  inspired  by  his  Divinity  lectures,  that  not 
only  did  we,  his  pupils,  continue  to  attend  them  in 
the  very  crisis  and  agony  of  our  final  work  for  our 
degrees,  but  little  by  little  we  obtained  permission  to 
introduce  our  friends ;  and  the  first  germ  of  those 
inter-Collegiate  lectures  which  have  revolutionised 
Oxford  teaching,  and  gave  your  new  professor  of 
Greek  a  field  to  display  his  masterly  gifts  as  a 
teacher,  is  to  be  found  in  those  close-packed  chairs 
that  crowded  the  still  damp  ground-floor  rooms  in  the 
then  New  Buildings,  as  they  are  still  called,  on  the  top- 
most story  of  which  our  lecturer  had  his  rooms.  Pie  was 
— need  I  say  it? — a  singularly  attractive  and  inspiring 
teacher;  but  in  saying  this  I  feel  that  I  have  said 
little.  It  is  impossible  for  me  to  describe  to  you,  it 
is  difficult  for  me  to  analyse  to  myself,  the  feelings 
which  he  inspired  in  a  circle,  small  at  first,  but  with 
every  fresh  term  widening  and  extending.  The  fasci- 
nation, the  charm,  the  spell,  were  simply  irresistible ; 
the  face,  the  voice,  the  manner;  the  ready  sympathy, 
the  geniality,  the  freshness,  the  warmth,  the  poe- 
try, the  refinement,  the  humour,  the  mirthfulness  and 
merriment,  the  fund  of  knowledge,  the  inexhaustible 
store  of  anecdotes  and  stories,  told  so  vividly,  so 
dramatically,  —  I  shall  not  easily  enumerate  the  gifts 
which  drew  us  to  him  with  a  singular,  some  of  us  with 
quite  a  passionate  devotion.  Arnold,  before  and  after 
his  death;  Arnold,  to  us  Rugby  men  —  well !  he  was 
Arnold  still.  We  never  dreamed  of  a  rival  to  him.  I 


CHAP,  ii.]       AETHUE  PENEHYN  STANLEY.  59 

am  sure  that  in  those  days  we  never  thought  of  weigh- 
ing Stanley  against  him.  They  dwelt  apart  in  our 
minds ;  apart,  yet  coupled  in  a  sense  together.  Living 
or  dead,  the  Elijah  of  that  day  was  wrapped  to  our 
young  souls  in  a  certain  cloud  of  awe.  Stanley  him- 
self never  quite  lost  the  feeling.  But  the  Elisha  on 
whom  his  mantle  fell  was  near  and  dear  to  us.  That 
sympathetic  touch  that  won  him  to  the  end  of  his 
life  fresh  friends  at  every  breath  he  drew,  had  already 
come  to  one  who  as  a  child  had  lived  much  alone,  un- 
companionable and  undemonstrative  to  a  fault,  writing 
his  boyish  poems,  and  hidden  in  the  light  of  ideas  and 
knowledge  which  he  was  hourly  absorbing.  It  is  felt 
by  some  of  us,  as  a  thing  that  coloured  our  whole  lives 
from  that  day  to  this.  We  walked  with  him,  some- 
times took  our  meals  with  him  —  frugal  meals,  for  he 
was  at  the  mercy  of  an  unappreciative  college  "scout," 
who  was  not  above  taking  advantage  of  his  master's 
helplessness  in  arranging  for  a  meal,  and  his  indiffer- 
ence to  any  article  of  diet  other  than  brown  bread 
and  butter ;  we  talked  with  him  over  that  bread  and 
butter  with  entire  freedom,  opened  our  hearts  to  him; 
while  his  perfect  simplicity,  no  less  than  his  high-bred 
refinement,  made  it  impossible  to  dream  that  any  one 
in  his  sober  senses  could  presume  upon  his  kindness. 
He  was  steeped  in  work.  For  two  years  he  was  de- 
voting himself  to  the  immortal  biography  of  his 
master.  Afterwards  he  was  continually  studying, 
devouring  books,  entering  more  and  more  keenly  into 
the  theological  and  other  controversies  of  the  next  few 


60  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  n. 

years,  deeply  and  absorbingly  interested,  I  need  hardly 
say,  in  the  crisis  through  which  the  University  and  the 
Church  were  passing  in  the  years  between  1841  and 
1845.  He  was  surrounded  more  and  more  by  friends 
and  associates  of  his  own  age,  or  older ;  he  was  be- 
coming more  and  more  conspicuous  in  literary  as  well 
as  in  theological  circles.  He  was  busied  in  writing  such 
sermons  as  those  on  the  Apostolic  Age,  in  which  he 
first  made  his  mark  as  an  academical  preacher  and  —  I 
use  the  word  in  its  widest  and  truest  sense  —  as  a 
theologian.  He  was  full  of  schemes,  full  of  hopes,  for 
the  reorganisation  and  enlargement  of  the  University, 
as  ultimately  effected  by  the  Commission  of  which,  in 
the  closing  part  of  this  chapter  of  his  life,  he  was  the 
indefatigable  Secretary.  I  remember  how,  soon  after 
I  had  ceased  to  be  his  pupil,  and  had  reached  the 
dignity  of  a  junior  Fellowship,  on  our  return  from  a 
walk,  in  which  he  had  discussed  the  question  of  a  royal 
or  parliamentary  Commission — a  question  which  could 
not  have  been  mentioned  in  ordinary  Oxford  society 
without  causing  scandal — he  paused  for  a  moment  oppo- 
site one  of  the  most  wealthy,  not  perhaps  the  most  educa- 
tional of  Colleges,  and  whispered,  "The  only  drawback 
to  such  reforms  is  that  this  institution  must  at  once 
flourish  on  the  ruins  of  Balliol."  Reform  has  come,  and 
Balliol  still  holds  its  own !  But  in  spite  of  all  these 
interests  and  all  these  employments,  and  in  spite  of  a 
correspondence  that  grew  with  the  growing  number 
of  his  friendships,  and  in  spite  of  the  weeks  which  he 
almost  yearly  gave  to  travel,  the  amount  of  his  time 


CHAP,  ii.]       ARTHUR  PENEHTN  STANLEY.  61 

and  of  his  best  self  which  he  gave  to  his  younger 
friends  was  something  almost  incredible.  Some  of  us 
can  recall  the  half-amusing,  half-touching,  efforts  which 
he  made  to  become  acquainted  with,  and  win  the  con- 
fidence of,  a  class  of  men  least  likely  to  be  impressible 
to  one  like  himself;  the  missionary  spirit,  if  I  may  use 
the  phrase,  in  which  he  regarded  his  relation  to  the 
undergraduates  of  his  College ;  a  College  which  steadily 
continued — owing  mainly  to  his  own  reputation — to 
attract  to  it  an  unusual  portion  of  the  £lite  of  the 
best  schools  in  England.  Many  must  still  remember 
his  introducing  what  had  long  been  abandoned  in  that 
ancient  College — I  am  not  sure  that  he  had  not  to  go 
back  as  far  as  the  times  of  the  Commonwealth  for  a 
precedent — the  preaching  of  occasional  sermons  in  the 
College  chapel.  They  will  recall  his  very  voice,  and 
accent,  and  look,  and  manner,  and  gesture.  But  it  was 
not  his  preaching,  nor  his  teaching,  it  was  himself  most 
of  all  which  impressed  us.  We  always  knew — and  it 
was  the  secret  of  his  winning  to  the  end  of  his  days 
the  hearts  of  the  young,  and,  let  me  add,  of  the  humble 
and  working  classes  of  his  countrymen  —  we  always 
knew  that  he  treated  us  and  felt  to  us  as  a  friend ; 
cared  for  us,  sympathised  with  us,  gave  us  his  heart, 
and  not  his  heart  only,  but  his  best  gifts;  that  we  did 
not  sit  below  the  salt,  but  partook  with  him  of  all  that 
he  had  to  give ;  and  what  he  gave  us  was  just  that 
which  was  most  calculated  to  win  and  attract,  as  well 
as  to  inspire  and  stimulate.  There  still  live  in  my 
own  memory  the  vivid  recollections;  there  have  been 


62  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  n. 

placed  in  my  hands  the  still  existing  evidences  of  his 
active  kindness  and  beneficence  to  present  or  former 
pupils;  the  letters,  long  or  short,  of  sympathy  in 
trouble,  advice  in  doubt  or  difficulty ;  the  pecuniary 
aid  given  so  freely  and  so  delicately  whenever  he  saw 
an  opening  to  do  so  with  good  results. 

I  have  said  perhaps,  out  of  the  abundance  of  my 
own  recollections,  with  the  written  testimonies  of 
others  by  my  side,  more  than  you  will  have  cared  to 
hear  on  this  chapter  of  his  life ;  yet  it  is  one  which 
may  have  a  special  interest  in  the  close  vicinity  of  a 
great  northern  University.  Let  me  end  by  repeating 
once  more  what  I  have  already  said,  that  the  impres- 
sion which  he  made  upon  many  at  least  of  his  Oxford 
pupils  was  one  which  it  is  impossible  to  convey  fully 
to  those  outside  that  circle ;  it  will  be  intelligible  in 
some  degree  to  all  who  have  enjoyed  his  society. 
You  could  not,  I  may  almost  say,  think  of  evil  in  his 
presence.  The  atmosphere  round  him  was  as  pure 
and  elevating  as  it  was  rich  in  interest.  It  was  indeed 
full  of  "  whatsoever  things  are  pure,  whatsoever  things 
are  lovely,  whatsoever  things  are  of  good  report." 

I  must  pass  over  the  effective  part  that  he  bore, 
towards  the  close  of  his  residence  in  Oxford,  in  intro- 
ducing, as  Secretary  to  the  first  University  Commis- 
sion, many  changes  of  the  most  important  and  vital 
nature  in  the  constitution  of  the  University.  To 
reform  an  ancient  institution,  to  breathe  new  life 
into  venerable  forms,  was  a  work  exactly  suited  to 
one  as  averse  from  a  merely  obstructive  conservatism 


CHAP,  ii.]       AETHUE  PENEHYN  STANLEY.  63 

as  lie  was  impatient  of  the  spirit  that  seeks  only  to 
destroy.  It  is  enough  for  one  who  was  a  member  of 
a  Commission  but  lately  appointed  to  follow  mainly 
in  the  lines  then  laid  down,  to  say  that  the  reforms 
established  were  chiefly  directed  to  two  objects;  first, 
to  widen  the  influence  of  the  University  by  the  re- 
moval of  restrictions,  local,  professional,  or  theologi- 
cal, which  kept  more  than  half  closed  the  admission 
to  its  emoluments  and  its  distinctions ;  and  secondly, 
to  revivify  an  almost  dormant  Professoriate. 

I  must  pass  over,  also,  the  intense  interest  which 
then,  as  always,  he  took  in  the  contemporary  history 
of  his  own  country  and  of  the  Continent.  Two 
instances  only  let  me  give.  Some  here  will  recall 
the  now  distant  fall  of  Sir  R.  Peel's  Ministry  in  the 
summer  of  1846,  after  the  full  establishment  of  free 
trade  by  that  great  Minister.  On  that  occasion  the 
young  tutor  of  University  wrote  as  follows :  —  "  Peel's 
speech  is,  to  me,  the  most  affecting  public  event  which 
I  ever  remember :  no  return  of  Cicero  from  exile,  no 
triumphal  procession  up  to  the  temple  of  Capitoline 
Jove,  no  Appius  Claudius  in  the  Roman  Senate,  no 
Chatham  dying  in  the  House  of  Lords,  could  have 
been  a  truly  grander  sight  than  that  great  Minister 
retiring  from  office,  giving  to  the  whole  world  free 
trade  with  one  hand,  and  universal  peace  with  the 
other,  and  casting  under  foot,"  he  adds,  "  the  misera- 
ble factions  which  had  dethroned  him  — 

'  E'en  at  the  base  of  Pompey's  statue, 
Which  all  the  while  ran  blood,  great  Caesar  fell.' 


64  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  ir. 

So  I  write,  the  metaphor  being  suggested  by  an  eye- 
witness, who  told  me  that  it  was  Mark  Antony's  speech 
over  Caesar's  body,  but  spoken  by  (Caesar)  himself." 

Again  the  shock  that  passed  through  Europe  in 
1848  moved  him  profoundly.  I  have  no  doubt  that 
his  journals  will  be  found  to  contain  a  perfect  magazine 
of  anecdotes  of  Guizot,  Lamartine,  Louis  Philippe, 
and  the  Parisian  mob.  "  Here  I  am,"  he  writes 
from  London  in  July  of  that  year,  "  working  hard 
at  I.  Corinthians,  and  seeing  no  one  of  importance 
except  Guizot,  and  two  or  three  more  eye-  or  ear- 
witnesses  of  Feb.  24  or  June  24,  whose  accounts  I 
treasure  up  for  my  grand-nephews,  when  they  come 
in  1894,  on  the  outbreak  of  the  Fourth  French  Revo- 
lution and  the  formation  of  the  Sclavonic  Empire, 
to  hear  the  traditions  of  the  great  days  of  1848" 
(July  29th,  '49). 

Meantime,  if  the  circle  of  his  personal  friends,  and  of 
his  private  and  public  interests,  was  extending  year  by 
year,  his  public  position  was  becoming  every  year  more 
prominent  and  less  acceptable  to  a  large  portion  of  the 
religious  world  in  England,  and,  I  may  perhaps  add,  in 
Scotland  also.  Great  as  was  the  impression  made  by 
the  life  of  Arnold,  there  was  an  instinctive  feeling  that 
even  Arnold's  unquestionable  hold  on  the  essential 
truths  of  Christianity  represented  another  form  of  re- 
ligious belief  to  that  on  which  the  views  and  principles 
either  of  the  High  Church  or  of  the  Evangelical  party 
were  moulded ;  and  both  these  parties  agreed  in  regard- 
ing his  biographer  with  somewhat  of  a  growing  distrust 


CHAP,  ii.]       ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  65 

and  suspicion.  It  did  not  win  him  the  support  of  the 
High  Church  clergy  that  he  had  devoted  himself  heart 
and  soul  to  prevent  the  condemnation  in  the  Oxford 
Convocation  of  Mr.  Ward,  who  had  succeeded  Dr.  New- 
man as  their  acknowledged  leader  in  1845,  or  had  done 
his  utmost  to  defeat  the  formal  censure  of  the  cele- 
brated tract  No.  90  by  the  same  assembly.  They 
knew  well  that  he  had  no  sympathy  with  their  most 
cherished  views,  and  the  divergence  might  have  been 
read  between  the  lines  of  all  that  he  had  as  yet  pub- 
lished, even  if  he  had  not  met  their  somewhat  exclusive 
claims  to  represent  the  "Church  Party"  by  the  asser- 
tion that  the  Church  of  England  was,  "  by  the  very 
conditions  of  its  being,  not  High,  or  Low,  but  Broad." 
On  the  other  hand,  the  leaders  of  the  Evangelical 
section  of  English  Churchmen  were  not  won  to  him, 
but  the  reverse,  by  the  language  in  which  in  1850  he 
hailed  the  then  famous  "Gorham  judgment,"  the  Magna 
Charta  of  their  continued  existence  in  the  Church,  in 
the  earliest,  but  not  the  least  telling  or  brilliant,  of  his 
theological  contributions  to  the  "Edinburgh  Review." 
When  he  spoke  of  "  the  inestimable  advantage"  of 
that  decision  as  consisting  in  the  fact  that  "it  retained 
within  the  pale  of  the  Establishment  both  the  rival 
schools  of  Theology,"  and  went  on  to  add  that  "  the 
Church  of  England  was  meant  to  include,  and  always 
had  included,  opposite  and  contradictory  opinions  not 
only  on  the  point  now  in  dispute,  but  on  other  points 
as  important,  or  more  important  than  this,"  he  seemed 
to  many  of  those  whose  cause  he  was  pleading  to  be 


66  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  ir. 

shaking  the  very  basis  of  the  Christian  faith.  They 
would  scarcely  have  been  conciliated  had  they  been 
told,  as  they  were  told  twenty  years  later,  that  the 
main  substance  of  that  very  Article  had  been  written, 
though  not  published,  several  years  earlier,  "in  the 
hope  of  averting  the  catastrophe  which  drove  out  from 
the  Church  of  England  such  men  as  Dr.  Newman  and 
his  friends."  They  felt  also  that,  averse  as  he  might 
be  to  impress  upon  others  ideas  of  a  purely  negative 
and  unsettling  character,  though  he  had  deprecated 
the  day  of  inevitable  trial,  "  when  the  works  of  Ger- 
man Biblical  criticism  would  be  read  indiscriminately 
by  all  the  men,  women,  and  children  in  England," 
yet  his  views  on  Scriptural  Inspiration,  and  on  other 
important  subjects,  differed  widely  from  their  own. 

I  may  have  an  opportunity  further  on  of  saying 
something  of  his  theological  position.  But  do  not  let 
me  for  a  moment  disguise  the  fact  that  however  strong 
his  personal  piety,  however  deep  his  own  religious 
convictions,  he  stood  from  first  to  last  quite  apart  from 
both  th,e  two  great  parties  in  the  English  Church;  that 
his  theological  views  squared  with  neither.  I  do  not 
know  that  he  himself  ever  disguised  the  fact  that  he 
looked  on  each,  even  as  he  said  much  later  of  the  sepa- 
rate Churches  of  Christendom,  "  as  having  something 
which  the  other  had  not,"  and  recognised  "the  human, 
imperfect,  mixed  character"  of  each.  The  natural 
result  was  that  from  first  to  last  he  was  an  object  of 
almost  equal  suspicion,  an  object,  theologically  speak- 
ing, I  might  almost  say,  of  almost  equal  antipathy  to 
both. 


CHAP,  ii.]       ARTHUE  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  67 

When  however  the  time  came,  in  1851,  for  him  to 
leave  Oxford  and  accept  the  Canonry  of  Canterbury, 
the  reception  which  he  met  with  in  his  new  home  was 
cordial,  and  the  dissatisfaction,  doubtless  felt  in  some 
quarters,  was  expressed  in  undertones.  The  change 
was  well  timed.  His  friends  had  begun  to  feel  that 
the  position  which  he  had  gained  as  a  student  and  as  a 
writer  had  long  merited  public  recognition.  They  felt 
also  that  it  was  time  that  he  should  be  removed  from 
the  many  wearisome  details  of  a  College  Tutor's  life ; 
and  his  father's  death  and  his  consequent  entering 
into  a  moderate  amount  of  landed  property  had,  under 
then  existing  regulations,  made  the  retention  of  his 
Fellowship  impossible.  Heavy  blows  indeed  had  fallen 
on  that  happy  family  circle.  In  September  of  1849  he 
had  reached  Brahan  Castle  just  in  time  to  see  his 
father  lying  unconscious,  and  passing  away  from  a  life 
of  unwearied  labour.  In  a  short  time  came  the  news 
that  in  the  month  previous  the  youngest  son,  who  had 
reached  the  rank  of  a  captain  in  the  Royal  Engineers, 
had  succumbed  to  a  sudden  attack  of  fever  in  Van 
Diemen's  Land.  As  his  young  widow  entered  the 
harbour  of  Sydney  in  hopes  of  receiving  the  support 
and  consolation  of  a  welcome  from  her  husband's 
brother,  Captain  Owen  Stanley,  she  found  that  he  too 
had  lived  only  long  enough  to  hear  that  both  his 
brother  and  his  father  had  gone  before.  Worn  out 
with  the  incessant  toil  entailed  by  his  survey,  in  com- 
mand of  the  sailing  frigate  Rattlesnake,  of  the  perilous 
Coral  Sea,  and  by  the  intense  anxiety  attendant  on  a 


68  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  ir. 

lengthened  cruise  "amongst  a  mass  of  shoals  and 
reefs,  where  the  lead  gives  no  warning,  and  the  look- 
out from  the  masthead  is  often  useless  from  the  col- 
our of  the  coral,"  the  gallant  sailor,  "  after  twenty- 
three  years  of  arduous  service  in  every  clime,"  died 
in  March,  1850,  at  the  age  of  thirty-eight.* 

His  father's  death  struck  him  to  the  quick.  "  The 
crash,  the  gloom,  the  uprooting  and  the  void,"  he 
wrote  between  his  father's  death  and  funeral,  "is 
at  times  overwhelming,  but  of  him  even  more  than 
of  Arnold  I  believe  that  I  shall  soon  feel  that  I  would 
not  have  him  back  again  for  all  that  a  restored  home 
could  give."  And  those  who  knew  him  well  may 
recognise  the  occasional  reference  in  later  sermons 
and  addresses  to  that  circle  of  brothers  and  sisters, 
each  so  rich  in  different  gifts,  which  time  and  death 
had  so  greatly  broken  up ;  or  knew  how  vivid  was 
the  recollection  of  the  first  accumulation  of  family 
sorrows  on  that  affectionate  heart. 

You  will  not  expect  me  to  enter  into  the  details  of 
his  life  as  a  Canon  of  Canterbur}^.  You  have  heard 
perhaps  of  his  famous  interview,  immediately  after  his 
nomination,  with  your  great  countryman,  Thomas 
Carlyle,  and  of  the  answer  which  he  received  at  last 
to  the  twice-repeated  question,  "  What  is  the  advice 


*  Few,  perhaps,  who  saw  the  remarkable  gathering  of  men  of 
science  at  the  funeral  of  Arthur  Stanley  remembered  that  it  was  not 
the  least  eminent  among  them,  Professor  Huxley,  who  had  been  his 
eldest  brother's  companion  in  that  distant  voyage,  and  who,  in  the 
pages  of  the  "  Westminster  Review,"  paid  a  tribute  to  the  memory 
of  his  lost  friend  and  commander  after  his  return  to  England. 


CHAP,  u.]       AETUUR  PENRUYN  STANLEY.  69 

which  you  would  give  to  a  Canon  of  Canterbury  ?  " 
"  Dearly  beloved  Roger  "  (the  answer  began  in  jest, 
but  ended  in  earnest),  "  Whatsoever  thy  hand  findeth 
to  do,  do  it  with  all  thy  might ;  "  and  with  all  his  might 
he  strove,  there  and  elsewhere,  to  find  the  right  work, 
and  to  do  it  with  his  might  —  strove  to  realise  in 
himself  a  thought  he  often  expressed,  not  without  a 
tacit  reference  to  his  father's  experience  as  well  as  to 
his  own ;  "  High  offices  in  Church  and  State  may  fill 
even  ordinary  men  with  a  force  beyond  themselves ; " 
and  again,  "Every  position  in  life,  great  or  small, 
can  be  made  almost  as  great  or  as  little  as  we  desire 
to  make  it." 

It  was,  I  need  not  say,  delightful  for  him,  in  spite  of 
much  natural  regret  at  leaving  Oxford  friends,  not  only 
to  "  have  leisure  for  a  few  tranquil  years  of  independent 
research  or  studious  leisure  "  (I  quote  his  own  words, 
used  later),  "where  he  need  contend  with  no  pre- 
judices, entangle  himself  with  no  party,  travel  far  and 
wide  over  the  earth  with  nothing  to  check  the  constant 
increase  of  knowledge  which  such  experience  brings ; " 
but  to  be  placed  at  once  in  connection  (to  use  once 
more  his  own  words)  "  with  the  cradle  of  English 
Christianity,  the  seat  of  the  English  Primacy,"  "  his 
own  proud  Cathedral,"  as  he  learnt  to  call  it,  "  the 
Metropolitan  Church  of  Canterbury." 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  his  seven  years  at  Can- 
terbury were  seven  years  of  exceeding  value  to  him. 
Here  it  was  that  he  brought  to  full  ripeness  and 
maturity  his  wonderful  gift  of  throwing  a  fresh  and 


70  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  n. 

human  interest,  one  which  reaches  even  the  most 
unlettered  of  his  hearers  or  readers,  into  great  his- 
toric scenes  or  great  historic  monuments.  It  was  at 
Canterbury  that  he  at  once  undertook  to  impress 
upon  his  new  fellow  citizens  the  great  advantages 
which  they  enjoyed  by  living  under  the  shadow  of 
that  stately  fabric.  It  was  not  at  Westminster  but  at 
Canterbury  that  he  found  his  earliest  opportunity  for 
uttering  the  characteristic  words,  "  It  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  if  anyone  were  to  go  through  the  various 
spots  of  interest  in  or  around  our  great  Cathedral,  and 
ask,  What  happened  here  ?  Who  was  the  man  whose 
tomb  we  see  ?  Why  was  he  buried  here  ?  What  effect 
did  his  life  and  death  have  upon  the  world  ?  a  real 
knowledge  of  the  history  of  England  is  to  be  gained, 
such  as  the  mere  reading  of  books  or  lectures  would 
utterly  fail  to  supply."  *  It  was  not  at  Westminster 
but  at  Canterbury  that  he  spoke  of  "  what  may  seem 
to  be  mere  stones  or  bare  walls  becoming  so  many 
chapters  of  English  history."  None  who  ever  went 
through  that  grand  Cathedral  with  him  will  forget 
the  vividness  with  which  each  successive  incident 
in  the  tragic  story  of  the  murder  of  Becket  was 
re-enacted,  as  it  were,  on  the  very  spot  where  each 
occurred.  In  his  "  Memorials  of  Canterbury,"  dedi- 
cated to  a  venerable  brother  Canon  who  still  resides 
— may  he  long  do  so!  —  in  his  delightful  home  in 
those  beautiful  precincts,  and  written,  as  he  says  in 
the  Introduction,  "  in  intervals  of  leisure,  taken  from 

*  Memorials  of  Canterbury,  p.  99. 


CHAP,  ii.]       ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  71 

subjects  of  greater  importance,"  he  gave  to  the  world 
a  more  than  sufficient  justification  for  his  removal  to 
that  fair  city.  But  the  advantages  of  his  life  at  Canter- 
bury were  not  limited  to  literary  work,  whether  in  im- 
mediate connection  with  that  life  or  on  other  subjects, 
such  as  his  "Commentary  on  the  Epistles  to  the  Cor- 
inthians," written  mostly  at  Oxford  but  completed 
there.  It  was  here  that  the  freedom  which  he  enjoyed 
for  gratifying  his  instinctive  love  for  travel  was  so  fully 
indulged,  and  with  such  great  results.  Already,  as  we 
have  seen,  he  had  taken  every  opportunity  of  "enlarg- 
ing his  mental  vision,"  of  seeking  a  fresh  and  complete 
influx  of  new  ideas,  by  visiting  far  and  wide  scenes  and 
places  of  historic  interest.  Spain,  Germany,  including 
Bohemia,  France,  and  Italy,  he  had  already  traversed. 
Scotland  also,  as  I  have  already  said,  had  begun  to  exer- 
cise over  him  the  fascination  which  became  afterwards 
so  much  deeper  and  stronger.  But  now  he  took  a  wider 
flight.  After  a  visit  to  Italy  and  Rome  with  his  mother 
and  two  sisters,  and  after  returning  to  England  with  hot 
haste  in  time  to  be  present  at  the  funeral  of  the  Duke  of 
Wellington,  he  started,  at  the  close  of  1852,  for  the  tour 
in  Egypt  and  the  Holy  Land,  which  resulted  in  the 
publication  of,  next  to  the  "Life  of  Arnold,"  the  most 
widely  popular  of  all  his  works,  "  Sinai  and  Palestine." 
Of  the  wonderful  light  which  that  work  throws  on 
sacred  history  I  shall  not  now  say  one  word.  I  will 
only  say  that  the  greater  part  of  it  is  but  a  reproduction 
of  letters  written  to  his  friends.  As  Professor  Goldwin 
Smith  wrote  to  him  on  his  return,  "  You  have  nothing 


72  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  n. 

to  do  but  to  piece  together  your  letters,  cut  off  their 
heads  and  tails,  and  the  book  is  done."  But  something 
I  may  say  of  his  journey  which  was  not  recorded  in  the 
pages  of  "  Sinai  and  Palestine."  Two  of  the  party  of 
four  were  Scotsmen.  One  of  these,  from  his  justice, 
good  temper,  and  power  of  command,  received  from 
their  Eastern  attendants  the  name  of  "  the  Governor  " ; 
but  Stanley  was  invariably  "the  Sheik,"  the  holy  man. 
He  gained  this  title  partly  from  his  knowledge  of  the 
localities  which  they  visited,  and  his  familiarity  with 
and  interest  in  all  the  strange  outgrowth  of  Arab 
legends  ;  but  he  gained  it  also  by  the  pure  and  beauti- 
ful, and,  in  their  unsophisticated  eyes,  unversed  in  the 
bitter  controversies  of  the  Christian  world,  by  the 
saintly  character  of  one  whom  they  watched  and  lived 
with  day  and  night  for  weeks.  Well  can  we  who 
knew  the  man  understand  the  story,  how  Mohammed, 
the  faithful  dragoman,  after  the  last  farewell  was  over, 
crept  down  into  the  cabin,  knelt  and  seized  his  hand, 
and  then  rushed  away  with  an  outburst  of  passionate 
grief  at  parting  with  one  whom  he  would  never  see 
again,  and  whom,  in  spite  of  the  difference  of  creed, 
he  reverenced  as  a  saint.  The  journey  was,  notwith- 
standing inevitable  occasional  discomforts,  a  source  to 
him  of  the  deepest  delight.  "  Those  glorious  days,"  he 
said  of  them,  "which  can  now  never  be  taken  away." 
At  Cairo  and  on  the  Nile  he  re-read  the  "  Arabian 
Nights ; "  and,  what  seemed  to  him,  destitute  as  he  was 
of  his  father's  taste  for  birds  or  beetles,  "  the  infinite, 
endless,  boundless,  monotony"  of  the  voyage  up  the 


CHAP,  ii.]       ARTHUR  PENEHYN  STANLEY.  73 

Nile  was  beguiled  by  reading  all  the  parts  of  the  Bible 
that  referred  to  Egypt  in  the  original  Hebrew.  In  the 
same  spirit  he  prepared  himself  for  a  careful  survey  of 
the  sacred  soil  of  Palestine,  by  toiling  through  every 
word  of  Robinson's  elaborate  four  volumes.  "  I  read 
them,"  he  said,  "now  riding  on  the  back  of  a  camel  in 
the  desert,  now  travelling  on  horseback*  through  the 
hills  of  Palestine,  now  under  the  shadow  of  my  tent 
when  I  came  in  weary  from  the  day's  journey.  They 
are  among  the  very  few  books  of  modern  literature 
of  which  I  may  truly  say  that  I  have  read  every 
word."  Those  who  had  the  privilege  of  visiting  him 
at  Canterbury  on  his  return,  and  found  him  overflow- 
ing with  the  recollections  of  his  journey,  as  well  as 
with  the  intense  interest  inspired  by  the  Cathedral  and 
its  neighbourhood,  will  well  understand  his  closing  a 
letter  of  invitation  to  Professor  Max  Miiller  with  the 
words,  "  I  consider  I  was  never  so  well  worth  a  visit." 
It  was  from  Canterbury,  also,  towards  the  end  of 
his  tenure  of  office  there,  that  he  made  the  visit  to 
the  Baltic,  St.  Petersburg,  and  Moscow,  the  result 
of  which  he  embodied  in  his  volume  on  the  Greek 
Church.  "  I  have  been  deeply  interested,"  he  says  in 
a  letter  written  in  a  Baltic  steamer  on  Sept.  29th,  1857, 
to  one  who  was  becoming  every  year  more  closely 
united  to  him  by  friendship  and  by  sympathy,  Mr.,  or, 

*  He  was  probably  one  of  the  worst  horsemen  in  Europe,  Asia,  or 
Africa,  from  the  day  when  his  first  visit  to  Norwich  was  marred  by  a 
fall  from  what  he  called  "  the  episcopal  pony,"  to  the  day  when  hi» 
life  was  all  but  lost  on  his  second  visit  to  Egypt  with  the  Prince  of 
Wales,  and  a  donkey  was  henceforth  found  for  him. 


74  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  n. 

as  here  he  should  be  called,  for  it  is  to  Scotland  that  he 
owes  the  title,  Dr.  George  Grove,  "  I  have  been  deeply 
interested  in  Norway  and  Sweden,  more  in  St.  Peters- 
burg, most  of  all  in  Moscow.  Russia  fully  answered  my 
expectations,  in  the  flood  of  light  which  I  derived  from 
my  sight  of  those  two  great  cities.  If  you  wished  to  bring 
out  the  dramatic  effect  of  Russian  history,  it  could  not 
be  better  done  than  by  the  contrast  between  Moscow 
and  Petersburg.  The  great  Eastern  nation  striving  to 
become  Western,  or,  rather,  the  nation  half  Eastern, 
half  Western,  dragged  against  its  will  by  one  gigantic 
genius,  literally  dragged  by  the  heels  and  kicked  by 
the  boots"  of  the  Giant  Peter,  into  contact  with  the 
European  world."  I  dare  not  read  more,  though  the 
opening  passage  is  barely  a  fair  sample  of  a  letter 
every  line  of  which  is  full  of  picturesque  effects,  as  he 
enumerates  the  points  of  Oriental  character  in  the 
Russian  people  —  "  some  great,"  he  says,  "  some  small, 
but  all  delightful  to  me,  as  making  me  feel  once  more 
in  the  ancient  East."  Of  that  ancient  East  he  wrote 
on  his  first  visit  that  he  now  understood  the  then 
Mr.  Disraeli's  language,  who  speaks  of  it  in  "  Tancred  " 
as  being,  to  a  traveller  from  Europe,  "another  planet." 
If  his  residence  in  Canterbury  was  not  only  a 
delightful  pause  in  his  always  busy  life,  and  fruitful 
as  giving  him  leisure  for  such  journeys  as  these,  and 
for  such  literary  work  as  his  "  Memorials  of  Canter- 
bury," "  Sinai  and  Palestine,"  and  his  "  Canterbury 
Sermons,"  it  was  not  less  delightful  or  less  useful  in 
developing  another  and  a  different  side  of  his  character. 


CHAP,  ii.]       ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  75 

It  was  now  that  for  the  first  time  he  exchanged  his 
bachelor's  rooms  at  Oxford  for  a  house  and  home  of  his 
own.  It  is  needless  to  say  how  often  that  home  was 
cheered  by  the  presence  of  his  mother,  dearer  now  to 
him,  if  possible,  than  ever,  or  of  his  sisters,  one  of 
whom  had  been  for  some  time  the  wife  of  his  early 
friend,  Charles  Vaughan,  then  Head  Master  of  Harrow. 
Rarely  has  that  ancient  city  of  Southern  England 
had  such  a  centre  of  social  life  within  its  fair  Cathedral 
precincts.  Citizens  and  officers,  residents  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood, visitors  from  afar,  old  friends  and  new 
acquaintances,  met  in  that  most  delightful  of  homes, 
and  there  it  was  that  the  once  self-contained  and  re- 
tiring youth,  the  child  shy  to  the  verge  of  moodiness, 
developed  those  social  gifts  which  made  him  to  the 
end  of  his  days  not  only  the  coveted  guest  of  every 
circle  in  England — I  might  almost  say  in  Europe — but 
the  very  best  and  most  delightful  of  hosts.  What 
those  social  gifts  were,  some  here  have  the  happiness 
of  knowing.  Their  charm  lay  in  their  perfect  simpli- 
city and  naturalness,  in  their  use  being  so  obviously 
based  on  the  kind  heart  that  was  bent  on  one  purpose 
—  to  cheer,  to  amuse,  to  instruct  others,  not  on  self- 
display.  There  come  back  to  the  memory  of  one  here, 
perhaps  of  many,  times  when  the  most  delightful,  the 
most  dramatic  and  picturesque  of  his  stories  were 
told  with  all  the  charm  of  his  voice  and  manner — the 
voice  that  became,  as  has  so  well  been  said,  "  resonant 
and  full "  when  he  recited  a  quotation  from  poetry,  or 
a  saying  of  interest — not  to  charm  a  listening  circle  of 


76  RECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  n. 

men  or  women  of  mark  or  rank,  but  to  amuse  a  weary 
and  silent  friend,  or  to  enliven  a  tedious  drive  through 
country  lanes.  I  will  only  add  that  he  himself  greatly 
enjoyed  this  first  entry  into  the  position  of  a  house- 
holder. At  the  close  of  his  Canterbury  life,  in  a  letter 
written  on  the  sudden  bereavement,  by  his  young  wife's 
death,  of  one  of  his  Oxford  pupils,  he  writes  with  some- 
thing of  a  prophetic  instinct,  "  But  yet  on  the  whole 
I  feel  sure  that  even  with  such  dreadful  contingencies 
in  store  it  is  better  to  have  had  a  home  and  wife  than 
never  to  have  had  either.  To  have  had  even  a  home 
as  I  have  had  at  Canterbury  has  been,  I  am  convinced, 
an  immense  step  in  life  —  much  more  would  the  other 
have  been." 

The  great  public  and  national  events  which  marked 
this  period  can  only  be  noticed  here  so  far  as  they  most 
closely  affected  his  personal  history.  It  will  be  enough 
to  mention  his  sister's  mission  to  the  hospitals  of  the 
Crimea,  or  rather  of  Scutari,  in  the  Crimean  war ;  and 
in  connection  with  this  mission,  his  own  first  visit  to  the 
Court  of  England  and  to  the  Queen  and  Royal  family; 
his  delight  in  the  appointment  of  his  dear  friend, 
Archibald  Campbell  Tait,  his  own  tutor  at  Balliol,  and 
Arnold's  successor  at  Rugby,  to  the  see  of  London 
(1856).  "  He  will  give,"  he  said  of  the  present  revered 
Primate  of  England,*  "  he  will,  in  my  humble  judg- 
ment, give  the  Church  of  England  a  great  lift.  Scot- 

*  The  words,  as  well  as  those  on  the  next  page,  are  printed  as 
spoken  in  November.  It  was  on  the  3rd  of  the  following  month  that 
the  Archbishop  died. 


CHAP,  ii.]       ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  11 

land,"  he  adds,  "  as  you  may  suppose,  claps  her  hands 
and  sings  for  joy  at  his  elevation."  And  well  might 
Scotland  do  so !  One  of  the  first  acts  of  the  new 
Bishop  of  London  was  to  appoint  Arthur  Stanley  as  his 
examining  chaplain,  an  office  which  he  retained  till  his 
appointment  to  the  Deanery  of  Westminster,  and  in 
which  he  was  succeeded  by  the  present  Bishop  of 
Durham.  Almost  greater  still  was  his  satisfaction  — 
greater  even  than  that  with  which  he  hailed  the  ap- 
pointment to  Rugby  of  Dr.  Temple — at  the  elevation  to 
the  Bishopric  of  Calcutta  of  one  of  whom  he  once  spoke, 
"  as  on  the  whole  the  very  best  Bishop  whom  he  had 
ever  known,"  the  then  Master  of  Marlboro  ugh  College, 
Dr.  Cotton.  It  is  to  this  dear  friend  of  his  that  your 
countryman  and  our  Primate  bore  so  lately,  from  that 
sick  bed  which  is  the  centre  of  so  many  prayerful 
thoughts  in  England  and  in  Scotland,  his  testimony 
that  "he  wielded  among  the  civilians  of  India  a 
power  unknown  to  any  of  the  great  men  who  have 
ever  occupied  the  see." 

The  year  1858  saw  the  close  of  the  calm  and  fruitful 
stage  in  his  life's  progress,  of  which  Canterbury  was  the 
scene.  He  was  now  to  enter  on  a  work  for  the  duties 
of  which  his  whole  life  might  well  have  seemed  one  long 
preparation,  that  of  the  Professorship  of  Ecclesiastical 
History  in  the  University  of  Oxford.  The  appointment 
is  vested  in  the  Crown,  and  it  may  be  well  to  remind  you 
that  each  of  the  three  important  offices  which  Arthur 
Stanley  held  hi  succession  came  to  him  from  the  same 
source,  and  were  due  to  the  impression  which  his  genius 


78  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  u. 

and  character  had  made,  not  on  the  Church  in  its 
narrowest  sense,  nor  again  on  the  Crown  in  the  per- 
sonal sense  of  the  term,  but  on  the  Church  and  nation 
at  large  as  represented  in  the  "  kingly  commonwealth 
of  Great  Britain,"  by  the  Sovereign  and  her  responsible 
Ministers.  Which  of  these  three  offices  he  would  have 
ever  held,  had  the  appointment  rested  in  other  hands, 
was  a  question  which  his  friends  would  sometimes  ask 
with  amused  perplexity,  and  answer  with  much  relief 
and  thankfulness  that  things  were  as  they  were  ;  that 
the  selection  in  these  cases  lay  with  the  First  Minister 
of  the  Crown,  who  was  free  to  give  due  weight  to 
claims  which  were,  in  the  general  opinion,  unrivalled. 
"  There  is  one  and  one  only  possible  candidate,  and 
that  is  Arthur  Stanley,"  were  the  words  of  his  dis- 
tinguished friend,  the  historian  Milman,  then  Dean 
of  St.  Paul's,  when  consulted  on  the  subject  by  an 
influential  Churchman. 

I  do  not  suppose  that  there  are  many  here  who  have 
ever  read  the  three  inaugural  lectures  which  he  deliv- 
ered before  crowded  audiences  beneath  what  I  venture 
to  call  the  august  roof  of  the  Sheldonian  Theatre  at  Ox- 
ford. That  Theatre  had  been  the  scene,  one-and-twenty 
years  before,  of  his  own  early  distinction  as  the  reciter 
of  the  Prize  Poem  which  to  the  discerning  critic  might  at 
once  have  revealed  the  unmistakeable  stamp  of  true 
genius.  Five  years  later,  in  the  spring  of  1842,  it  had 
been  thronged  again  by  crowds,  the  great  majority 
of  whom  came  to  see,  for  the  first  and  for  the  last 
time,  the  striking  face  and  listen  to  the  powerful 


CHAP,  n.]       ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  79 

voice  of  one  who  bore  the  name,  suggestive  to  many 
only  of  aversion  and  dread,  of  Thomas  Arnold.  And 
now,  in  the  place  where  Arnold,  to  the  joy  and  exulta- 
tion of  his  devoted  pupils,  in  the  last  spring  given  him 
on  earth,  had,  by  his  simple  and  manly  eloquence,  won 
back  the  heart  of  an  alienated  University,  the  most 
distinguished  of  those  pupils  poured  forth  his  accumu- 
lated treasures  of  study,  travel,  thought,  and  imagina- 
tion. The  opening  words  of  his  first  lecture  were 
eminently  characteristic.  Years  before  he  had  been 
struck  by  a  passage  in  the  "  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  in 
which  the  pilgrim  Christian  was  cheered  and  solaced 
on  his  way  by  the  sight  of  the  treasures  and  records  of 
the  palace  of  which  the  name  was  "  Beautiful."  He 
had  promised  himself  at  the  time  that,  should  he  ever 
address  an  Oxford  audience  on  ecclesiastical  history,  he 
would  begin  his  lecture  with  the  quotation.  And  he 
kept  his  promise.  The  first  words  which  he  uttered 
in  his  capacity  of  Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  History 
were  taken  from  the  great  work  of  the  devout  non- 
conformist tinker  of  Midland  England,  whom  sixteen 
years  later,  when  Scotland  and  Scottish  associations 
had  filled  so  large  a  part  of  the  background  of  that 
vivid  imagination,  he  startled  a  Bedfordshire  audience 
by  speaking  of  as  "  the  Robert  Burns  of  England." 
He  closed  the  last  of  the  three  lectures  with  a  quota- 
tion from  the  same  author. 

Read  these  Lectures  even  now,  in  the  light  of  his 
later  works  and  his  later  letters,  and  you  will  see  that 
they  embody  his  whole  views,  his  whole  life,  his  whole 


80  EECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  n. 

self.  Listen  to  his  characteristic  determination  to  begin 
his  treatment  of  his  subject,  not  with  the  era  of  the 
Reformation,  not  with  the  rise  of  the  Papacy,  not  with 
the  age  of  the  earlier  Fathers,  but  to  start  from  "  the 
first  dawn  of  the  history  of  the  Church,  when  in  Ur  of 
the  Chaldees  the  first  figure  in  the  long  succession  that 
has  never  since  been  broken,  the  first  Father  of  the 
Universal  Church,  started  on  that  great  spiritual  migra- 
tion which  from  the  day  that  Abraham  turned  his  face 
away  from  the  rising  of  the  sun  has  been  stepping 
steadily  Westward."  Read  his  earnest  protest  against 
the  "  narrowing  and  vulgarising  process  by  which  the 
original  sense  of  great  theological  terms  becomes  de- 
faced and  marred  and  clipped  by  the  base  currency  of 
the  world,  till  the  Christian  Church  comes  to  signify, 
not  the  whole  congregation  of  faithful  men  dispersed 
throughout  the  world,  but  a  priestly  caste,  a  monastic 
order,  a  little  sect,  or  a  handful  of  opinions ;  till  the 
word  "  ecclesiastical "  has  come  down  to  signify,  not  the 
moral,  not  even  the  social  or  political  interests  of  the 
whole  community,  but  the  very  opposite  of  these — such 
questions  as  the  retention  or  abolition  of  a  vestment, 
its  merely  outward,  accidental,  ceremonial  machinery." 
Read  his  estimate  of  the  position  of  great  laymen, 
such  as  St.  Louis  in  France,  Dante  in  mediaeval  Italy, 
"the  half  heretic  half  Puritan  "  Milton  in  England,  as 
"the  true  interpreters,  the  true  guides  of  the  thoughts 
and  feelings  of  their  respective  ages."  Read  his  descrip- 
tion, drawn  from  the  happy  experience  of  his  own  past, 
and  foreshadowing  that  of  his  future  life,  of  the  effect 


CHAP,  ii.]       ARTHUR  PENEHTN  STANLEY.  81 

of  "  meeting  face  to  face  an  opponent  whom  we  have 
known  only  by  report.  He  is  different  from  what  we  ex- 
pected ;  we  cannot  resist  the  pressure  of  his  hand,  the 
glance  of  his  eye."  Read  above  all  the  words  in  which 
he  pours  out  his  whole  soul  on  that  which  lay  so  near 
his  heart,  "  the  endless  vigour  and  vitality  of  the  words 
of  Holy  Scripture."  Read,  if  you  wish  to  grasp  the 
key  to,  I  had  almost  said,  his  whole  lifelong  position  as 
a  theologian,  the  energetic  expression  which  he  gives  to 
what  to  some  may  seem  an  idle  dream,  but  which  was 
to  him  the  mainstay  of  his  life,  the  conviction  "  that  in 
that  virgin  mine,  the  insufficiently  explored  records, 
original  records,  of  Christianity,  there  are  still  materi- 
als for  a  new  epoch ;  that  another  and  a  different  esti- 
mate of  the  points  on  which  Scripture  lays  the  most 
emphatic  stress  warrants  the  hope  that  the  existing 
materials,  principles,  doctrines  of  the  Christian  religion 
are  far  greater  than  have  ever  yet  been  employed,  and 
that  the  Christian  Church,  if  it  ever  be  permitted  or 
enabled  to  use  them,  has  a  long  lease  of  new  life  and 
new  hope  before  it."  I  quote  the  words, because, uttered 
in  1858,  they  contain  the  very  gist  of  that  which,  wheth- 
er you  or  I,  this  person  or  that  person,  agree  or  disagree, 
was  his  belief,  his  hope,  his  aspiration,  now  bright,  now 
sadly  clouded,  till  his  dying  day.  Approve  or  disap- 
prove, call  him  a  dreamer,  blame  him,  condemn  him, 
if  you  will,  but  recognise  the  fact  that  in  this  faith 
and  this  hope  —  that  of  a  new  and  greater  future  for 
the  Church  of  Christ  —  Arthur  Stanley  lived  and  died. 
The  interest  which  was  awakened  by  the  opening  lee- 


82  RECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  n. 

tures  of  the  new  Professor  was  sustained  throughout 
by  the  more  regular  courses  which  they  inaugurated. 
Those  who  are  familiar  with  the  two  first  volumes  of 
his  "  Jewish  Church  "  will  readily  understand  the  at- 
traction which  they  must  have  had,  as  spoken  lectures, 
for  the  young  students  of  theology,  to  the  majority 
of  whom  they  came  almost  as  a  new  revelation  of  the 
wealth  of  historical  and  other  teaching  that  was  to  be 
gathered  from  the  records  of  Jewish  History.  There 
were  those  among  them  whose  subsequent  theological 
position  and  tenets  differed  widely  from  those  of  their 
gifted  teacher ;  but  not  the  least  emphatic  testimony 
to  the  value  and  the  permanent  effect  on  their  own 
minds  of  the  light  thrown  by  him  on  the  pages  of  the 
Old  Testament  would  be  borne  by  those  who  could 
not  possibly  be  claimed  as  his  theological  adherents. 
And  the  mere  preparation  and  delivery  of  those  in- 
spiring and  instructive  Lectures  formed  but  a  small 
part  of  the  duties  which  he  set  himself  to  perform. 
His  old  love  for  the  society  of  the  young  was  rekin- 
dled at  the  sight  of  the  hundreds  of  undergraduates 
swarming  in  the  streets  of  Oxford.  "  My  heart  leaps 
up,"  he  would  say,  repeating  a  parody  suggested  by 
his  friend  Clough,  "when  I  behold  an  undergraduate;" 
and  it  may  well  be  said  that  to  the  very  end  of  his  days 
his  years  were  "  bound  each  to  each  by  the  natural 
piety  "  of  affection  for  friends  of  every  age,  from  early 
youth  to  the  latest  stage  of  human  life.  It  was  not 
only  to  the  younger  members  of  Christ  Church,  or  to 
those  who  attended  his  own  lectures,  that  his  house 


CHAP,  ii.]       ARTHUR  PENRHTN  STANLEY.  83 

was  open.  More  than  one  or  two  of  the  masters  of  great 
English  schools  were  encouraged  to  introduce  to  him 
their  pupils  on  their  entrance  at  the  University,  and, 
among  those  who  still  mourn  his  loss  most  keenly,  are 
some  whose  long  and  close  friendship  began  in  this  way. 
But  his  social  position  at  Oxford  was  one  as  peculiar 
and  unparalleled  as  was  his  own  personality.  Never 
I  suppose  before,  and  certainly  never  since,  has  there 
been  a  house  in  which  the  representatives  of  the 
most  opposite  views  and  parties,  accustomed  to  regard 
each  other  as  almost  belonging  to  different  worlds, 
could  be  won  to  meet  in  such  free  and  social  inter- 
course. It  was  his  delight  to  place  side  by  side  at  his 
table,  and  to  unite  in  friendly  conversation,  men  who 
had  hitherto  met  each  other,  if  at  all,  only  in  sharp, 
and  sometimes  acrimonious,  debate.  And  his  own 
unrivalled  social  gifts,  his  humour,  his  vivacity,  his 
endless  store  of  anecdotes  connected  with  places  and 
persons  visited  in  his  travels,  gave  a  charm  to  his  soci- 
ety which  few,  either  then  or  later  on  at  Westminster, 
could  wholly  resist.  "  What  an  element,"  says  Bishop 
Cotton,  in  a  letter  written  from  Oxford,  "of  peace 
and  goodwill  is  Stanley !  so  heterogeneous  a  dinner  ! 
yet  all  most  humorous  and  cheerful !  Stanley's  sto- 
ries about  Becket's  brains,  and  Louis  XVI.'s  blood, 
assume  a  positively  sacred  colour  when  they  bind 

together  in  friendly   union   the   latitudinarian 

and  the  stiff-necked ."     As  every  year  added  to 

the  circle  of  his  friends  and  acquaintances  at  a  dis- 
tance, Oxford  society  was  continually  enlivened  and 


84  RECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  n. 

diversified  by  the  visits  of  distinguished  foreigners, 
or  persons  eminent  elsewhere  in  the  fields  of  litera- 
ture or  science.  Whatever  storms  might  rage  in 
academical  society,  the  future  guardian  of  the  "  great 
temple  of  reconciliation  and  peace  "  made  it  his  aim 
to  make  his  own  house  a  place  at  the  threshold  of 
which  the  demon  of  controversial  bitterness  must  be 
exchanged  for  a  more  Christian  spirit. 

Yet  the  air  around  him  was  charged  with  contro- 
versy. One  that  raged  through  a  great  part  of  his 
Oxford  residence  was  the  question  of  providing  a 
higher  salary  than  £40  a  year  for  his  attached  and 
early  friend,  the  eminent  scholar  who  held,  and  still 
adorns,  the  post  of  Professor  of  Greek  at  that  wealthy 
University.  Those  whom  I  am  addressing  may  find 
it  difficult  to  realise  the  animosity  with  which  so 
obvious  an  act  of  policy  as  well  as  of  justice  was 
defeated,  time  after  time,  by  the  votes  of  theological 
opponents,  or  the  almost  "judicial  blindness"  by 
which  the  seeds  of  a  bitter  and  rankling  sense  of 
injustice,  fruitful,  alas !  of  evil  to  come,  were  sown 
broadcast,  in  the  name  of  a  religion  of  righteousness 
and  peace,  among  the  future  leaders  of  academical  life. 
But  it  will  not  be  difficult  for  you  to  understand  or  to 
recall  the  whirlwind  which  was  raised  by  the  publica- 
tion, or  rather  by  the  attacks  and  discussion  which  fol- 
lowed in  due  time  the  publication,  in  1860,  of  the  famous 
volume  of  "  Essays  and  Reviews."  It  is  not  my  pur- 
pose to  enter  into  the  details  of  that  long  and  bitter 
controversy  which  for  a  time  convulsed  the  English 


CHAP,  ii.]       ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  85 

Church,  and  which  was  not  finally  laid  to  sleep  till  after 
at  least  three  years  of  clamorous  agitation.  Stanley's 
position  was  characteristic.  He  objected  most  strongly 
to  the  whole  scheme  and  form  of  the  work.  "  In  a  com- 
posite publication  "  he  recognised  from  the  very  first 
"  a  decided  blunder."  But  this  was  not  all.  While 
admitting  that  almost  the  whole  of  the  first,  and  much 
in  the  last,  of  the  seven  Essays,  was  eminently  con- 
servative, he  censured  strongly  the  generally  negative 
character  of  the  volume.  "  No  book,"  he  said,  "  which 
treats  of  religious  questions  can  hope  to  make  its 
way  to  the  heart  of  the  English  nation,  unless  it 
gives  at  the  same  time  that  it  takes  away,  builds  up 
at  the  same  time  that  it  destroys."  And  in  addition 
to  this,  he  thought  that  one  at  least  of  the  Essays 
might  be  fairly  charged  with  "  needlessly  throwing 
before  the  English  public,  which  had  never  heard  of 
them,  conclusions  arrived  at  by  the  lifelong  labours 
of  a  great  German  theologian,  without  any  argument 
to  support  or  recommend  them.  We  do  not,"  he 
said,  "defend  the  madness  of  the  bull,  but  we  must 
bestow  some  of  our  indignation  on  the  man  who 
shakes  the  red  flag  in  his  face."  But  this  felt  and 
said,  he  flung  himself  with  all  his  own  generosity  and 
ardour  into  the  defence  of  writers  who  represented, 
with  whatever  drawbacks,  the  sacred  cause,  as  he 
held  it,  of  liberty  of  thought  among  the  English 
clergy,  the  cause  which  in  the  judicial  suits  which 
followed  he  believed  "  to  be  pleading  for  its  very  life." 
Nowhere  has  he  written  with  greater  force,  vivacity, 


86  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  n. 

and  energy  than  in  the  appeals  which  he  made  to  the 
educated  public  through  the  pages  of  the  Edinburgh 
Review,  in  articles  written  on  this  question  —  one 
when  the  storm  was  at  its  height,  two  others  when 
the  danger  was  past.  For  he  felt  himself  to  be  pleading 
for  a  cause  which  he  believed  to  involve  the  whole  fu- 
ture of  the  National  Church,  "the  learning  of  the  most 
learned,  the  freedom  of  the  freest,  the  reason  of  the 
most  rational  Church  in  the  world."  And  he  dreaded 
above  all  things  a  breach  between  the  higher  intelli- 
gence of  the  rising  generation  and  the  tenets  of  that 
Church,  which  would  not  only  "  have  dealt  a  heavy 
blow  to  all  biblical  study,  but  have  gone  far  to  reduce 
it  to  the  level  of  an  illiterate  sect  or  of  a  mere  satellite 
of  the  Church  of  Rome."  By  this  controversy  the 
combative  side  of  his  nature,  which  was  no  less  real 
if  less  strongly  marked  than  its  peaceful  and  social 
side,  was  called  into  full  activity,  never  again  to  be 
allowed  an  entire  repose  —  I  might  almost  say  for  the 
rest  of  his  life,  whether  at  Oxford  or  at  Westminster. 
It  was  during  his  residence  as  Professor  at  Oxford 
that  in  pursuance  of  the  wish  of  the  lamented  Prince 
Consort,  and  at  the  express  desire  of  the  Queen,  he  ac- 
companied the  heir  to  the  throne,  in  the  spring  of  1862, 
on  a  second  visit  to  Egypt  and  Palestine.  His  old  and 
curious  objection  to  re-visiting  scenes  of  former  travel 
had  become  greatly  modified,  as  that  ardent  traveller 
found  that  he  would  soon  have  to  sigh  for  new  worlds 
to  conquer ;  and  he  accepted  without  hesitation,  and 
discharged  with  much  real  enjoyment,  the  important 


CHAP,  ii.]       ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  87 

trust  committed  to  him  by  the  Crown.  For  any  sac- 
rifices which  it  involved  he  had  a  rich  reward  in  the  ad- 
ditional facilities  which  he  enjoyed,  in  virtue  of  the 
respect  paid  to  his  Royal  companion,  for  visiting  at  last 
such  an  object  of  interest  as  the  Mosque  at  Hebron. 
He  was  repaid  still  more  by  the  warm  feelings  which 
he  inspired  during  those  memorable  four  months  in  the 
new  circle  in  which  he  travelled,  alike  in  the  youthful 
Prince,  and  in  one  who  bore  a  name  dear  to  every 
Scotsman,  in  General  Bruce,  the  Prince's  faithful 
friend  and  counsellor,  the  brother  of  her  who  was  ere 
long  to  be  the  solace  of  his  life.  Sunday,  too,  after 
Sunday  he  was  enabled  —  now  on  the  Nile  itself,  now 
in  the  great  hall  of  the  temple  at  Karnak,  "  in  the 
grandest  building,"  as  he  called  it,  "  which  the  old 
world  ever  raised  for  worship;"  now  on  shipboard  at 
the  ancient  Joppa,  now  under  canvas  above  Shechem, 
or  by  the  springs  of  Nazareth,  or  on  an  Easter  morning 
by  the  Sea  of  Tiberias,  or  "  on  the  way  to  Damas- 
cus," or  under  the  shadow  of  the  temple  of  Baalbec, 
or  of  the  cedars  of  Lebanon,  or  off  the  shore  of  Patmos, 
to  give  utterance  to  the  thoughts  which  such  scenes 
awoke  within  him.  Those  short  sermons,  perhaps 
more  than  anything  which  he  ever  wrote,  reproduce 
his  very  inmost  feelings  on  life  and  death,  and  on  the 
relation  of  the  human  soul  to  duty  and  to  God. 

On  one  such  occasion  an  event  which  cast  a  deep 
shadow  over  that  otherwise  happy  journey  gave  an  ad- 
ditional pathos  and  impressiveness  to  his  words.  The 
news  of  his  mother's  death,  on  Ash  Wednesday,  1862, 


88  EECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  n. 

reached  him  when  on  the  Nile,  between  Alexandria 
and  Cairo.  He  preached  on  the  following  Sunday,  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  Memphis,  a  sermon  on  the  lesson 
for  the  day,  the  story  of  the  re-union  of  Joseph  and  his 
brethren  in  Egypt;  a  sermon  which,  for  the  pathetic 
eloquence  in  which  it  dwells  on  the  sacredness  of  home, 
and  for  the  suppressed  tenderness  and  emotion  with 
which  its  sentences  seem  to  thrill  and  tremble,  has 
hardly  been  surpassed  in  the  English  language.  There 
is  not  a  word  of  direct  allusion  to  his  own  loss,  and  I 
have  heard  that  his  voice,  though  deeper  than  usual, 
never  faltered  throughout.  But  it  must  have  been  hard 
to  have  listened  unmoved  to  a  fellow  traveller  who  had 
already  endeared  himself  to  all  his  companions  in  that 
memorable  journey,  as  he  spoke  in  the  presence  of  the 
young  heir  to  the  throne,  still  in  mourning  for  his 
father,  of  the  "  ties  that  link  those  who  have  passed 
into  the  world  beyond  the  grave,  with  those  to  whom 
their  wishes  are  now  commands,  their  lightest  desires 
sacred  wishes,  the  very  mention  and  thought  of  whose 
names  draws  us  upward  and  homeward,"  or  to  the 
concluding  words  in  which  he  spoke  of  "that  last 
best  home  where  Jacob  and  his  sons,  Rachel  and  her 
children,  shall  meet  to  part  no  more."  * 

*  Till  another,  and  even  sadder  Ash  "Wednesday,  came  to  end 
twelve  years  of  married  happiness,  he  always  spoke  of  his  mother's 
death  as  the  great  sorrow  of  his  life,  of  his  mother's  character  as 
the  best  human  manifestation  to  him  of  the  Christian  life.  He  joins 
the  two  days  together  in  lines  written  shortly  before  his  own  end. 
They  begin  with  the  words: 

"  O  day  of  ashes,  twice  for  me 

Thy  mournful  title  thou  hast  earned; 


CHAP,  ii.]       AETHUR   PENEHTN  STANLEY.  89 

Those  who  have  ever  glanced  at,  still  more  those 
to  whom  it  has  been  a  work  of  sadness  dashed  with 
delight,  to  read,  after  his  death,  those  "Sermons  in 
the  East,"  will  understand  his  words  written  after  his 
return :  "  My  sermons  were  to  me  an  immense  relief, 
and  it  was  a  great  satisfaction  to  feel  that  by  the 
end  of  the  time  I  had  said  almost  everything  that  I 
could  have  wished  to  say."  Later  on,  speaking  to  one 
of  his  many  friends  and  helpers  in  Westminster,  he 
said  that  his  fullest  and  deepest  convictions  were, 
he  thought,  to  be  found  in  the  pages  of  that  volume. 

His  return  to  a  home  now  vacant  of  the  mother  who 
for  years  had  been  more  than  a  mother  to  that  loving 
son,  was  necessarily  a  time  of  sadness  and  trial.  By 
the  kind  forethought  of  Her  in  whose  service  he  had 
been  absent  "o'er  seas  and  deserts  far  apart,"  when  the 
blow  fell,  and  who  from  that  time  counted,  we  may  well 
believe,  his  loyal  friendship  as  among  the  best  jewels 
in  her  crown,  his  first  meeting  with  the  sister  who  so 
keenly  shared  his  sorrow  took  place  neither  in  their 
London  nor  their  Oxford  home,  but  under  the  Royal 
roof  of  Windsor.  But  the  wound  was  very  deep. 
He  felt  in  his  own  words  that  the  "  guardian  genius  " 
had  "passed  away  that  nursed  his  very  mind  and 
heart."  Twelve  months  later,  in  thanking  a  much- 
valued  friend  for  well-deserved  words  of  praise,  "  You 

,  For  twice  my  life  of  life  by  thee 

Has  been  to  dust  and  ashes  turned." 

They  end  with  the  words: 

"  The  secret  of  a  better  life 
Read  by  my  mother  and  my  wife." 


90  EECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  n. 

know,"  he  said,  "how  what  you  have  said  would  have 
delighted  one  who  is  not  here  to  read  it.  When  I  think 
of  this  the  tears  fill  my  eyes ; "  and  those  to  whom  his 
happiness  was  dear  began  to  ask  each  other  whether 
there  was  any  hope  of  the  vacant  place  being  filled  by  a 
wife  worthy  of  such  a  husband.  Meantime  another  loss 
had  saddened  him.  His  new  friend  and  fellow  traveller, 
General  Bruce,  the  one  among  the  group  to  whom 
he  had  opened  freely  all  his  feelings  on  his  mother's 
loss,  was  taken  away  after  a  short  illness.  Arthur 
Stanley  was  with  him  when  he  died,  and  went  to 
Scotland  to  lay  him  in  his  grave  at  Dunfermline. 
The  friend  who  saw  him  on  his  return  will  never 
forget  the  conversation.  "It  was,"  said  Stanley, 
"the  very  first  time  that  I  had  seen  a  human  soul 
pass  with  full  consciousness  from  this  world  to  the 
world  beyond."  He  spoke  of  the  "  identity  of  char- 
acter remaining  to  the  very  last ;  thoughtfulness  for 
the  absent,  consideration  and  courtesy  for  others  — 
no  mere  outward  mask,  but  shown  in  his  very  dying 
moments,  when  the  last  prayer  had  been  breathed, 
to  the  nurse  who  attended  him.  His  last  farewell 
seemed  waved  to  me  from  the  invisible  world." 

But  he  had  much  to  call  away  his  mind  from  private 
troubles.  The  storm  raised  by  "  Essays  and  Reviews  " 
was  still  at  its  fiercest.  So  also  was  the  controversy 
as  to  the  Greek  Professorship,  of  which  I  have  already 
spoken.  The  second  volume  of  Bishop  Colenso's 
startling  work  appeared  in  the  same  year.  The  posi- 
tion of  one  whom  he  so  loved  and  reverenced  as  the 


CHAP,  n.]       ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  91 

saintly  Frederick  Maurice,  was  being  rendered  almost 
intolerable  by  the  assaults  of  those  who  have,  let  us 
hope,  long  since  repented  of  the  course  they  took. 
Oxford  society  was  divided  as  it  had  not  been  for  many 
years  by  bitter  controversy.  Even  his  own  rare  sweet- 
ness and  gentle  charm  could  not  allay  all  feuds.  Even 
in  the  circle  of  his  friends  there  had  been  some  passing 
coolness,  and  before  he  quitted  Oxford  the  feelings  and 
language  of  some  of  his  theological  opponents  had 
become  exceedingly  embittered;  "so  entirely,"  he 
wrote  of  one  of  them,  "  is  he,  in  this  respect,  bereft 
of  reason  as  to  render  charity  comparatively  easy." 
Yet  he  disclaimed  all  wish  to  leave  Oxford.  "  I 
earnestly  desire,"  he  said,  "  a  few  months  of  leisure 
to  consider  the  events  of  this  last  year." 

Early,  however,  in  1863  he  took  up  his  pen.  En- 
couraged by  an  Episcopal  Charge  delivered  to  his 
clergy  by  the  Bishop  of  London,  his  chaplain  ad- 
dressed to  him  a  letter  on  the  terms  of  Subscrip- 
tion enforced  at  the  Universities  and  on  the  clergy. 
Nothing  can  be  more  telling  than  the  arguments  in 
which  he  advocates  a  careful  re-consideration  of  the 
whole  question.  He  points  out  that  the  stringent 
form  then  required  could  only  be  subscribed  as  in- 
volving a  general,  not  a  particular  assent ;  that  so  un- 
derstood, there  was  no  section  of  the  English  Church, 
lay  or  clerical,  which  might  not  innocently  accept  it. 
But  he  saw  also  that  it  was  in  the  power  of  any 
"  malignant  or  narrow-minded  partisan  "  to  "  rattle 
up,"  as  he  said,  "  the  sleeping  lions,  heedless  of  the 


92  RECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  n. 

reflection  that  when  aroused,  they  will  devour  with 
equal  indiscrimination  on  the  right  hand,  and  on  the 
left,  and  so  add  to  the  general  evils  of  controversy 
the  great  and  peculiar  aggravations  of  constant  im- 
putations of  dishonesty  and  bad  faith."  He  pressed 
above  all  on  the  notice  of  a  Prelate  who  lived  to  be 
recognised  as  the  wisest  and  most  statesmanlike  of 
our  English  Archbishops,  that  in  this  direction  was 
to  be  sought  not  the  sole,  but  one,  remedy  for  "  the 
greatest  of  all  calamities  to  the  Church  of  England, 
the  gradual  falling  off  in  the  supply  of  the  intelli- 
gent, thoughtful,  and  highly  educated  young  men, 
who  twenty  and  thirty  years  ago  were  to  be  found 
at  every  Ordination."  I  must  not  attempt  to  carry 
the  attention  of  a  Scottish  audience  through  a  narra- 
tive of  all  that  followed;  though  the  results  were 
great,  and  the  whole  question  is  one  of  interest  not 
confined  to  the  Church  of  England.  It  is  enough 
to  say  that  in  1865,  after  a  stout  resistance  on  the 
part  of  those  who  declared  at  one  time  that  no  re- 
laxations were  necessary,  and  at  another  that  any 
relaxation  would  be  an  act  of  treason,  an  Act  of 
Parliament,  following  the  recommendations  of  a  Royal 
Commission,  abolished  the  elaborate  subscriptions  of 
"  Assent  and  Consent  to  all  and  everything  contained 
in  the  Prayer  Book  and  Articles,"  and  substituted  a 
simple  assent  to  them,  and  to  the  doctrine  therein 
contained,  and  a  pledge  to  use  these  Formularies,  and 
none  other,  without  lawful  authority.  The  change 
was  effected  with  an  ease  that  forms  a  marked  con- 


CHAP,  n.]       ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  93 

trast  to  the  keen  opposition  which  a  movement  in 
the  same  direction  encountered  in  the  House  of  Lords 
exactly  twenty-five  years  earlier.  Then  a  petition 
from  forty  clergymen  and  laymen  in  behalf  of  some 
modification  of  the  terms  of  subscription,  presented 
almost  with  apologies  by  Archbishop  Whately,  and 
gallantly  supported  by  Bishop  Stanley,  had  been 
almost  spurned  from  the  door  of  the  same  House,  in 
which  a  healing  measure  was  now  passed  without 
opposition,  and  almost  without  comment. 


94  BECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  ra. 


CHAPTER  III. 

(From  1863  to  1881.) 
WESTMINSTER. 

T  ATE  in  the  autumn  of  1863  came  the  removal 
-•— ^  of  Arthur  Stanley  from  Oxford  and  his  appoint- 
ment to  the  Deanery  of  Westminster.  At  the  end 
of  the  same  year,  postponed  somewhat  by  the  un- 
easiness caused  by  Lord  Elgin's  failing  health,  came 
the  great  event  of  his  life,  his  marriage  with  her 
who  once  more  brought  sunshine  into  his  heart. 

He  bade  farewell  to  the  University  in  a  sermon 
preached  in  the  month  of  November  in  the  Cathedral 
of  Christ  Church.  Nine  years  were  to  pass  before 
that  eloquent  voice  was  to  be  heard  again  in  the 
University  pulpit.  His  text  was  the  verse  in  the 
Gospel  of  St.  Luke  which  describes  our  Lord  as 
pausing  on  the  ridge  of  the  Mount  of  Olives,  "  the 
one  absolutely  authentic  spot  in  Palestine  where 
we  can  say  with  entire  certainty  that  His  presence 
passed,"  to  utter,  with  weeping,  the  memorable  words, 
"  If  thou  hadst  known,  even  thou  at  least  in  this  thy 
day,  the  things  ivhich  belong  unto  thy  peace"  He 


CHAP,  m.]      ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  95 

threw  his  whole  soul  into  his  parting  words.  As  he 
spoke  of  "  the  grief,  the  emotion,  which  stirs  our  inmost 
souls  at  the  thought  of  passing  from  a  great  institution 
of  which  we  have  formed  a  part,  with  which  some  of 
our  happiest  days  have  been  interwoven,"  all  felt  how 
genuine  was  that  grief,  how  deep  that  emotion.  But 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end  there  is  scarcely  a 
sentence,  scarcely  a  line  which  does  not  "  thrill  and 
tingle  "  with  warnings  and  encouragements,  aspira- 
tions and  regrets,  rebukes  and  appeals.  The  very 
inmost  history  of  past  and  recent  academical  progress 
and  controversies  can  be  read  between  its  lines; 
the  whole  history  also  of  the  hopes  and  fears  that 
divided  his  own  breast  as  he  put  before  his  hearers, 
many  of  whom  he  was  addressing  for  the  last  time, 
now  the  possibility  of  reading  in  the  future  "  nothing 
but  a  dreary  winter  of  unbelief,  which  is  to  be  the 
beginning  of  the  end,  and  to  shrivel  up  every  particle 
of  spiritual  life  ;  "  now,  "  the  danger  to  the  Church 
of  England  of  losing  for  ever  the  noble  ambition 
that  faith  and  freedom,  truth  and  goodness  may  yet  be 
reconciled ; "  now, "  the  glorious  prospect  to  be  spoken 
of — if  never  hereafter  in  this  place,  yet  in  other 
spheres,  if  God  so  please,  and  before  other  hearers  so 
long  as  life  and  strength  shall  last  —  the  glorious  pros- 
pect to  be  found  in  the  conviction  that  in  the  religion 
of  Christ,  better  and  better  understood,  in  the  mind 
and  words  and  work  of  Christ,  more  and  more  fully 
perceived,  lies  the  best  security.  ...  for  the  things 
which  belong,  not  to  our  peace  only,  but  to  the  peace  of 


96  RECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  in. 

universal  Christendom."  It  would  be  impossible  here 
to  give  any  adequate  idea  of  a  sermon  whose  special 
interest  was,  after  all,  academical.  Had  any  passing 
visitor  from  Scotland  found  a  seat  in  that  crowded 
cathedral,  he  might  have  recognised  an  allusion  to 
Lord  Elgin's  illness,  the  news  of  which  had  reached 
his  future  brother-in-law  on  the  evening  before ;  he 
would  have  been  struck  by  the  recital  of  some  re- 
markable words  of  Dr.  Chalmers,  spoken  twenty 
years  earlier  in  the  High  Street  of  Oxford ;  he  would 
certainly  have  found  many  to  agree  with  him  in 
thinking  that  the  most  touching  passage  in  that  elo- 
quent sermon  was  the  tribute  paid  to  the  "blame- 
less holy  life  "  of  a  young  Scottish  tutor  of  Christ 
Church,  who  had  passed  from  the  Edinburgh  Academy 
through  the  University  of  Glasgow  to  Balliol,  the 
news  of  whose  untimely  death  had  reached  the 
preacher  "  through  yet  darker  shadows  far,  far  away," 
almost  by  the  same  post  that  had  brought  the  tidings 
of  his  mother's  death. 

In  due  time  he  and  Lady  Augusta  were  established 
in  their  home  at  Westminster.  In  the  prominent  yet 
absolutely  independent  position  which  he  had  now 
reached,  many  of  his  friends  saw  the  post  most  calcu- 
lated to  give  to  such  powers  and  such  a  character  as 
his  their  full  development  and  influence.  It  would  be 
ungracious  to  recall  the  public  protest  raised  against 
his  appointment  by  one  of  the  most  respected  and 
most  learned  of  the  Canons  of  Westminster,  now  a 
Bishop  of  apostolic  zeal  and  saintly  character,  were  it 


CHAP,  m.]      ARTHUR  PENRUTN  STANLEY.  97 

not  for  the  sake  of  adding  that  the  new  Dean  at  once 
showed,  as  again  and  again  to  the  end  of  his  days, 
that  he  was  filled  with  that  Christian  grace  that 
"  thinketh  no  evil,  is  not  easily  provoked,"  and  that 
he  succeeded  ere  long  in  establishing  a  personal  rela- 
tionship of  cordial  and  friendly  intercourse  between 
himself  and  his  protesting  Canon.  But,  I  may  add 
that  there  were  some  few  among  his  friends  who,  on 
quite  other  grounds,  felt  misgivings  at  his  exchange 
of  an  academic  office  for  the  wear  and  tear  of  the 
social  and  political  life  of  London.  Some  also,  in  the 
spirit  of  a  saying  of  Cardinal  Newman's  —  "  Univer- 
sities are  the  natural  centres  of  intellectual  move- 
ments," —  doubted  whether  the  extended  influence 
which  he  was  sure  to  gain  over  a  larger  circle  would 
compensate  for  the  loss  of  that  growing  hold  on  the 
minds  of  the  future  clergy  which  his  post  at  Oxford 
was  yearly  ensuring  him.  The  second  question  is 
one  that  may  even  now  be  raised  and  discussed  by 
those  interested  in  the  life  of  the  University  and  of 
the  English  Church :  to  the  first,  his  life  at  West- 
minster, so  rich  in  fruitful  work  and  marked  results, 
is  the  best  reply. 

I  come  now  to  a  difficult  question.  How  can  I  best 
describe  that  period  in  his  life  which  extends  from  the 
beginning  of  1864  —  he  was  installed  on  the  9th  of 
January  —  to  the  sad  day  in  July,  1881,  when  he  was 
taken  from  us  ?  Shall  I  speak  to  you  of  his  social 
life  ?  or  of  his  work  as  Dean  ?  or  of  his  literary  work  ? 
or  speak  of  him  as  preacher,  or  lecturer,  or  speaker  ? 


98  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  ra. 

or  as  plunged  in  controversy,  as  the  leader  in  every 
movement  to  promote,  in  the  language  of  the  ancient 
instrument  to  which  he  declared  his  assent  on  his  in- 
stallation, "  the  enlargement  of  the  Christian  Church  "  ? 
or,  not  less,  as  the  champion  of  all  and  every  one 
whom  he  looked  on  as  the  victims  of  intolerance  or 
persecution  ?  Or  shall  I  speak  to  you  of  his  personal 
history,  his  domestic  life,  its  sacred  joys  and  sacred 
sorrows  ?  or  of  his  happy  autumns  spent  in  your  own 
country,  his  frequent  visits  to  this  very  city  ?  or  of  his 
many  sojourns  in  foreign  countries,  his  extended  ac- 
quaintance with  the  most  eminent  men  in  Europe  ? 
or  of  his  ever  growing  circle  of  devoted  friends  ?  or 
of  the  place  he  held  in  the  affection  of  the  working 
classes  ?  —  in  the  more  than  regard  of  his  Sovereign 
and  her  Family  ? 

As  we  think  of  all  these  things,  we  think  once  more 
of  the  irreparable  gap  which  his  loss  has  made,  and  of 
the  impossibility  of  doing  adequate  justice  to  such  a 
subject  under  close  limitations  of  space  or  time.  If 
a  few  scattered  observations  can  be  read  or  listened  to 
with  attention,  what  will  be  the  surpassing  interest 
of  the  biography  of  one  in  whose  character  his  friends 
may  proudly  feel  that  there  is  nothing  to  soften, 
nothing  to  keep  back,  when  all  that  wealth  of  mate- 
rials, of  which  I  have  scarcely  laid  my  hand  upon  a 
hundredth  part,  has  been  brought  before  us  by  a  bi- 
ographer worthy  of  the  task  ? 

For  his  social  life,  then,  using  the  term  in  its  widest 
sense,  let  me  speak  first  of  the  new  feature  in  that  life — 


CHAP,  m.]      AETHUE  PENEHYN  STANLEY.  99 

his  marriage,  and  all  that  it  brought  to  him.  If  there 
was  any  apprehension  among  his  earlier  friends  that 
his  union  with  one  whom  he  had  met  in  the  circle  of 
a  Court,  and  who  was  herself  rich  in  a  wealth  of  friend- 
ships, would  in  any  way  close  the  door  of  his  house  or 
his  heart  to  those  to  whom  they  had  hitherto  stood 
open,  the  fear  was  soon  dissipated.  In  that  gracious 
and  graceful  lady  they  found  a  new  friend,  who  gave 
no  mere  lip-welcome  to  his  and  her  new  home.  They 
rejoiced  to  see  her  seated  with  her  own  papers  and 
correspondence  in  the  lofty  library,  looking  westward 
into  Dean's  Yard,  which  will  so  long  be  associated  in 
many  minds  with  their  united  memory.  It  cheered 
her  to  receive  on  her  death-bed  twelve  years  later 
the  assurance  of  their  gratitude ;  it  rejoiced  him 
as  he  sat  by  her  coffin  side  with  one  who  had  shared 
those  first  misgivings,  to  hear  the  assurance  once  more 
repeated. 

Her  usual  seat  was  at  a  table  where,  after  her  death, 
stood  her  bust  in  marble,  a  few  feet  from  where  her 
husband  stood  at  his  desk,  plying  his  daily  task  of 
Jewish  history,  or  sermon,  or  lecture,  or  article,  or 
letters,  yet  ever  ready  to  turn  aside  for  a  few  moments' 
conversation  or  rest,  and  then  to  resume  his  work  where 
he  had  left  it.  His  old  pupils  marked  with  an  amused 
delight  her  tender  care  for  the  health  and  comfort  of 
one  curiously  incapable  of  taking  care  of  himself,  even 
in  the  most  essential  points  of  food  and  dress.  And 
she  not  only  shared  his  friendships,  but  went  with 
him  heart  and  soul  in  all  his  work  and  all  his  aspira- 


100  RECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.     in. 

tions,  "  in  every  joy  and  every  struggle,"  *  and  her 
companionship  developed  in  him  to  the  utmost  that 
capacity  for  social  life  in  its  highest  aspect,  on  which 
I  have  already  touched.  The  Deanery  soon  became 
a  social  centre  as  unique  of  its  kind  as  was  its  master. 
Church  dignitaries  —  not  seldom  some  who  half  an 
hour  before,  in  the  presence  of  Convocation  sitting 
within  ten  yards  of  the  room  and  beneath  the  same 
roof,  had  denounced  their  host  in  terms  which  have 
long  been  banished  from  all  language  but  that  of  theo- 
logical controversy  —  felt  the  spell  of  those  cordial  in- 
vitations and  that  genial  welcome,  and  returned  from 
that  plain  luncheon-table  softened  in  heart,if  not  wholly 
reconciled  to  their  entertainer.  There  the  Noncon- 
formist minister  found  that  full  social  recognition,  the 
absence  of  which  .has  done  much  to  widen  the  gulf 
between  the  Church  and  the  Nonconformist  world. 
There  the  pioneers  of  Science  found  a  listener  always 
appreciative,  always  eager  for  information,  "  keen  as 
a  hound  in  the  pursuit  of  knowledge,"  "  possessed  by 
what  the  French  called  la  grande  curiosit£,"  full  him- 
self to  overflowing  of  a  knowledge  other  than  their 
own,  never  depreciating  studies  which  were  alien  to 
the  bent  of  his  own  genius,  never  afraid  of  Truth,  al- 
ways ready  to  welcome  all  who  sought  for  her.  There 
the  leaders  of  literature  met  on  equal  terms  with  a 
master  of  their  craft.  There  too,  that  high-born  chiv- 
alry which  marked  his  inmost  nature,  threw  open  the 

*  The  words  used  by  himself  in  his  dedication  to  her  memory  of 
Vol.  3  of  his  Lectures  on  the  Jewish  Church. 


CHAP,  in.]     AETHUR  PENEHYN  STANLEY.  101 

doors  of  that  coveted  resort  to  men  from  whom  others 
in  his  position  might  have  withheld  a  welcome  :  to  the 
conscientious,  if  mistaken,  sufferer  from  theological 
bitterness,  or  to  the  most  eloquent  of  French  priests 
who,  in  the  supreme  moment  when  others  withdrew 
their  protest,  had  dared  to  beard  the  Vatican,  to  ques- 
tion Papal  Infallibility,  and  to  assert  the  right  of  a 
minister  of  the  Catholic  Church  to  Christian  matri- 
mony. Foreign  ecclesiastics,  Archimandrites,  Bishops 
of  the  Greek  Church,  met  there  the  representatives  of 
the  American  Churches  or  of  Indian  Missions.  There 
too,  above  all,  the  class  who  lived  by  daily  and  weekly 
wages  found  a  welcome,  not  merely  to  the  Abbey 
monuments,  round  which  he  delighted  to  conduct  them 
on  their  Saturday  half-holidays,  but  to  what  must  have 
seemed  to  them  the  spacious  rooms  of  the  quaint  and 
interesting  abode  of  the  Abbots  and  Deans  of  West- 
minster that  was  now  his  home.  His  social  gifts,  his 
stores  of  anecdotes,  his  quick  perception  alike  of  the 
serious  and  of  the  ridiculous,  his  ready  sympathy,  his 
power  of  apt  quotation,  are  as  impossible  to  describe 
as  the  marvellously  expressive  countenance,  "  the  eye 
now  beaming  with  sympathy"  —  I  quote  a  Scotsman's 
eloquent  words  —  "now  twinkling  with  humour,  the 
mobile  mouth  with  its  patrician  curves,  and  the  deli- 
cately sensitive  face."  The  remembrance  is  a  posses- 
sion which  those  who  have  enjoyed  will  never  lose,  but 
which  they  cannot  impart  to  others.  I  lighted  just  now 
by  chance  on  a  page  in  the  memoir  of  a  lady  once  well 
known  here,  who  in  extreme  old  age  received  from  him 


102  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  m. 

a  visit  in  her  retirement  among  the  English  lakes : 
"  There  is  no  one  like  Arthur  Stanley,"  wrote  Mrs. 
Fletcher ;  "  there  is  no  one  like  Arthur  Stanley  "  is 
the  echo  that  might  have  passed  from  lip  to  lip  through 
Scotland  as  through  England.  And  it  was  not  merely 
that  he  amused,  entertained  or  instructed.  He  won 
hearts.  Some  of  those  who  would  almost  have  given 
their  own  lives  to  prolong  his,  had  never  seen  him 
till  he  had  reached  threescore  years,  and  fresh  friends 
clustered  round  him  to  the  last,  ready  to  toil  for  him 
in  all  good  works,  not  least  in  the  service  of  the  Ab- 
bey which  he  loved. 

And  yet  it  must  also  be  stated  that  he  lived  in  an 
atmosphere,  if  on  one  side  of  peace,  on  another  of  con- 
tention and  struggle,  and  that  something  of  the  bit- 
terness which,  as  he  sadly  said  on  leaving  Oxford, 
"poisoned  the  upper  springs  of  academical  life,"  was  to 
be  found  even  in  the  freer  and  larger  world  of  London. 

It  was  scarcely  to  be  wondered  at.  His  aims  were 
distinct  and  clear ;  and  they  were  not  those  which 
were  palatable  either  to  the  religious  world  at  large  or, 
above  all,  to  his  clerical  brethren.  And  he  never,  as 
you  in  Scotland  well  know,  concealed  his  views,  or 
hesitated,  whether  among  friends  or  foes,  to  plead  the 
cause  which  he  had  most  at  heart —  "the  enlargement," 
in  his  own  favourite  words,  "  of  the  Church,  and  the 
triumph  of  all  Truth."  Every  attempl^to  repress  free- 
dom of  inquiry  within  the  Church,  or  to  vilify  scientific 
inquiries  outside  its  borders,  or  to  assert  the  claims  of 
the  clergy  to  resist  or  to  evade  the  supremacy  of  law, 


CHAP,  m.]      ARTHUR  PENEHTN  STANLEY.  103 

found  in  him  the  most  uncompromising  of  opponents. 
Every  effort  to  widen  the  borders  of  the  Church, 
whether  by  relaxing  a  stringent  subscription,  or  by 
admitting  those  whom  he  called  "the  nonconform- 
ing  members  of  the  Church,"  to  every  privilege  that 
the  widest  interpretation  of  the  law  permitted,  found 
in  him  a  never-failing  advocate.  His  own  intense 
belief  in  the  paramount  importance  of  the  spiritual 
and  the  moral  side  alike  of  Christianity  and  of  human 
nature,  made  him  somewhat  impatient  of  what  he  called 
"  the  materialism  of  the  Altar  and  the  Sacristy."  His 
avowed  sympathy  with  the  "  far-sighted  reformer  of 
Zurich  "  in  his  teaching  that "  the  significance  of  sacred 
rites  consists  not  in  the  perishable  accidents  of  their 
outward  token,  or  in  the  precise  forms  of  their  ministra- 
tion, but  in  the  souls  and  spirits  of  their  receivers,"  was 
perhaps  less  shocking  to  those  who  looked  on  Z  winglius 
as  a  heretic  than  his  characterising,  before  the  clergy 
assembled  in  Convocation,  the  vestment  controversy, 
then  and  still  convulsing  many  congregations,  as  a 
mere  question  of  "  Clergymen's  clothes."  If  it  is  quite 
true  that  —  I  quote  once  more  Scottish  testimony  — 
"he  stood  higher  in  the  respect  and  affection  of  a  larger 
and  more  varied  circle  of  members  of  many  churches 
than  any  ecclesiastic  in  the  world,"  it  is  equally  true 
that,  within  his  own  Church,  he  shocked  and  pained 
some  whom  he  would  fain  have  won,  and  was  more 
fiercely  vituperated,  and  regarded  with  greater  aver- 
sion than  perhaps  any  living  clergyman,  by  others 
whose  partisanship,  or  sensitiveness  to  theological  dif- 


104  RECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  in. 

ferences,  was  too  strong  for  their  charity.  Of  his  de- 
fence of  the  writers  of  "  Essays  and  Reviews  "  I  have 
already  spoken.  The  strife  became  even  hotter  after 
his  removal  to  London.  After  judgment  had  been  given 
by  the  highest  court  in  favour  of  the  side  which  he  had 
espoused,  he  dashed  with  one  final  charge  into  the  fray 
to  do  battle  with  the  Memorial  signed  by  eleven  thou- 
sand of  the  clergy  against  the  acquittal  which  had 
been  won.  In  Convocation,  that  is,  in  the  assembly 
of  the  Clergy  of  the  Province  of  Canterbury  held  at 
Westminster,  he  developed  powers  of  debate  the 
existence  of  which  neither  friends  nor  foes,  nor  he 
himself  had  ever  suspected.  And  those  powers  he 
used  freely.  The  year  1872  introduced  a  fresh  sub- 
ject of  religious  controversy.  An  attempt  was  made 
to  alter  a  word  in  the  Rubric  that  heads  the  Atha- 
nasian  Creed,  the  result  of  which  would  have  been  to 
make  the  reading  of  that  Creed  and  of  the  so-called 
"  damnatory  clauses  "  which  it  includes,  optional  in- 
stead of  obligatory.  The  course  indicated  was  sup- 
ported not  merely  by  its  actual  leader  and  inaugurator 
the  Dean  of  Westminster,  but  also  by  many  sober  and 
influential  churchmen.  I  am  not,  I  hope,  wronging  our 
venerable  Primate  in  expressing  a  belief  that  his  judg- 
ment, together  with  that  of  a  considerable  portion  of  the 
bench  of  Bishops  —  was  not  wholly  unfavourable  to 
the  proposal.  But  the  strife  was  perhaps  hotter  and 
keener  than  any  one  of  the  many  controversies  in 
which  our  friend  was  involved.  Already  he  had  been 
fiercely  impugned  for  including  Dissenters  from  the 


CHAP,  m.]      ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  105 

Church  of  England,  and  among  those  dissenters  a  Uni- 
tarian, in  an  invitation  to  a  Celebration  of  the  Holy 
Communion  to  be  held  in  Westminster  Abbey,  which 
was  sent  to  all  the  revisers  of  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ment Version.  He  was  looked  on  as  sharing  in  some 
way  the  responsibility  incurred  by  the  Primate  and  the 
other  English  Bishops  who  declined  to  use  the  occasion 
of  the  meeting  of  the  Pan-Anglican  synod  for  the  pur- 
pose of  confirming  the  sentence  passed  by  the  Bishop 
of  Cape  Town  on  the  Bishop  of  Natal.  It  is  perhaps, 
therefore,  not  surprising  that  his  speech  in  Convoca- 
tion on  the  Athanasian  Creed  was  received  with  some 
approach  to  clamorous  interruption.  Archdeacon  after 
archdeacon  rose  to  protest.  One,  himself  but  lately 
the  defendant  in  an  ecclesiastical  trial,  after  a  vain  ap- 
peal to  the  Prolocutor  to  silence  the  audacious  speaker, 
left  the  meeting  in  disgust.  The  words  "  Great  inter- 
ruption," cries  of  "No!  no"  occur  thickly  in  the  re- 
port of  the  proceedings.  Hostile  pamphlets,  printed 
sermons,  fell  in  showers  upon  him.  His  conduct  was 
stigmatised  by  one  church  dignitary,  whose  kindliness 
of  heart  is  often  belied  by  his  unmeasured  words,  in 
pages  dedicated  "by  his  afflicted  servant  and  much 
injured  son  in  Christ"  to  the  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury (himself  addressed  in  that  dedication  with  thinly 
veiled  reproaches),  as  scarcely  reconcilable  with  the 
most  fundamental  principles  of  morality.  He  and  his 
supporters  were  warned  that  "had  they  conducted 
themselves  in  the  service  of  an  earthly  sovereign  with 
like  profligacy,  they  would  inevitably  have  been  tried 


106  EECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  m. 

by  court-martial  and  shot."  They  were  called  upon, 
and  the  call  included  a  host  of  the  most  faithful  and  de- 
voted of  the  middle  party  among  English  Churchmen, 
"  to  go  out  instantly  from  the  Church  of  which  such 
men  proclaim  themselves  disaffected  and  disloyal  min- 
isters." If  one  of  his  opponents  ended  a  printed  let- 
ter with  a  grateful  acknowledgment  of  "  that  reverent 
love  for  the  Bible  which  you  taught  me  at  Oxford ; " 
others  had  recourse  to  such  phrases  as  "moral  de- 
pravity," "  immoral  priests,"  "  traitors  in  the  camp." 
He  was  publicly  taunted  with  committing  a  graver 
offence  than  "  the  tutor  who  corrupts  his  pupil's  mind, 
or  the  trustee  who  robs  the  widow  and  the  orphan  of 
their  property."  And  his  opponents  were  not  content 
to  beat  the  air  with  harmless  clamour.  Such  clamour 
never  ruffled  him.  But  a  blow  was  aimed  by  once 
friendly  hands  which,  had  it  struck  its  mark,  would 
have  wounded  him  to  the  quick.  An  organised 
effort  was  made  to  employ  a  dormant  power  of  the 
Convocation  of  Oxford  for  the  purpose  of  erasing  his 
name  from  the  list  of  University  Preachers  in  which  it 
had  at  last,  nine  years  after  his  last  sermon  preached 
there,  been  inserted  by  the  Board  charged  with  the 
duty  of  selection.  But  so  studied  an  insult  to  one  so 
widely  honoured  was  resented  by  many  who  were  little 
accustomed  to  take  part  in  University  controversies. 
Even  the  leaders  of  the  dominant  religious  party, 
though  they  took  no  overt  step  to  restrain  their  fol- 
lowers, declined  to  aid  them  with  their  votes ;  and 
the  only  result  of  the  threatened  stigma  was  to  effect 


CHAP,  m.]      ARTHUR  PENRHTN  STANLEY.  107 

what  all  but  the  blindest  leaders  of  the  blind  might 
have  easily  foreseen,  to  win  him  hearty  sympathy 
and  tenfold  attention  from  all  that  was  generous  in 
youthful  Oxford. 

I  only  revive  these  unpleasing  memories  in  order 
to  make  it  clear  that  he  was  to  the  very  end  of  his 
life  engaged  not  merely  in  peaceful  study,  or  in  such 
calm  statements  of  his  views  as  were  embodied  in  his 
utterances  here  and  elsewhere,  north  of  the  Tweed 
or  south,  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  or  the  other, 
but  in  a  succession  of  conflicts  —  that  he  was  the  ob- 
ject, not  merely  of  devoted  affection  and  widespread 
sympathy,  but  of  exceedingly  bitter  and  undisguised 
hostility. 

Let  me  give  an  instance,  or  rather  three  instances  of 
the  manner  in  which,  with  a  courage  and  promptitude 
of  which  his  early  youth  gave  little  promise,  but  which 
was  developed  in  him  more  and  more  as  life  went  on, 
he  was  every  year  more  eager  to  spring  to  the  rescue  of 
the  solitary  or  the  unfriended  —  more  ready  to  stand 
face  to  face  before  an  excited  and  hostile  majority. 
All  three  shall  be  taken  from  his  defence  of  Bishop 
Colenso,  who  had  been  condemned  of  heresy  by  his 
Metropolitan  the  Bishop  of  Capetown.  I  choose  this 
controversy  not  because  it  will  be  a  specially  wel- 
come or  acceptable  topic  to  those  whom  I  address. 
It  is  perhaps  the  one  in  which  he  stood,  I  will  not  say 
alone,  but  with  less  sympathy  and  less  following  than 
in  any  other  —  he  never  looked  behind  to  see  who 
followed  him.  But  I  choose  it  because  it  is  most 


108  BECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  ra. 

illustrative  of  his  chivalry  and  fearlessness,  and 
throws  most  light  on  the  hostility  which  he  provoked. 

I  choose  it  also  because  he  felt  and  expressed  not 
only  a  want  of  sympathy  with,  but  an  actual  aversion 
for,  the  special  mode  in  which  the  Old  Testament  was 
treated  in  some  at  least  of  Bishop  Colenso's  writings. 
The  object  of  much  of  those  works  was,  it  seemed,  to 
break  down  a  supposed  belief  in  the  literal  inspiration 
of  every  word  of  Holy  Scripture  by  invalidating  the 
accuracy  of  the  details  of  the  Old  Testament  narrative. 
The  aim  of  Stanley  was  entirely  different — always  and 
invariably  to  bring  out  the  treasures  of  the  Bible,  his- 
torical, poetical,  moral,  spiritual.  But  though  he  felt  no 
sympathy  with  the  form  which  Dr.  Colenso's  work  took, 
he  felt  entire  sympathy  with  him  as  a  real  and  honest 
searcher  after  truth;  he  earnestly  desired  to  protect  the 
Colonial  clergy  from  being  "judged  by  irresponsible 
Metropolitans  by  other  laws  than  those  of  England ; " 
and  he  strove,  in  the  interests  as  he  believed  of  truth 
and  freedom,  to  avert  the  severance  of  the  Colonial 
Churches  from  the  State  of  England. 

On  the  first  occasion,  so  earl}7  as  1866,  he  felt  called 
on  at  a  moment's  notice  to  oppose  a  resolution  brought 
forward  in  Convocation,  which  virtually  treated  the 
See  of  Natal  as  vacant.  After  going  seriatim  through 
the  various  points  on  which  Bishop  Colenso  had  been 
found  guilty  of  heresy  by  his  Metropolitan,  and  point- 
ing out  that  in  each  separate  case  the  condemnation 
must  be  shared,  sometimes  "  by  sainted  Fathers  of  the 
Church,"  sometimes  "by  English  divines  and  Bishops 


CHAP,  in.]      ARTHUR  PENRTIYN  STANLEY.  109 

of  unquestioned  orthodoxy,"  sometimes  by  "hundreds, 
nay  thousands  of  the  English  clergy,"  he  ended  by 
challenging,  in  a  very  striking  passage,  those  whom  he 
addressed,  to  institute  proceedings  against  one  who, 
"  though  on  some  of  these  awful  and  mysterious  ques- 
tions he  has  expressed  no  opinion,  yet  holds  the  same 
principles  as  those  which  have  been  condemned  by 
the  Bishop  of  Capetown.  That  individual  is  the  one 
who  now  addresses  you.  Judge,"  he  said,  "  righteous 
judgment."  It  is  needless  to  say  that  the  challenge 
was  not  taken  up. 

Years  after,  on  an  occasion  when  the  death  of  the 
Bishop  of  Capetown  was  calling  forth  well  merited 
expressions  of  sorrow  on  the  part  of  the  Clergy  assem- 
bled in  Convocation,  the  Dean  of  Westminster  rose 
and  read  an  extract  from  a  sermon  of  the  Bishop  of 
Natal  containing  a  dignified  and  affectionate  tribute 
to  his  work  and  character.  "For  myself,"  Dean  Stan- 
ley went  on  to  say,  "  I  do  not  profess  to  express  full 
agreement  with  the  Bishop's  words.  To  some  here 
they  may  appear  too  highly  coloured  by  the  recollec- 
tions of  early  friendship.  But  they  are  a  testimony, 
alike  to  the  Bishop  of  Capetown,  who  could  inspire 
such  sentiments,  and  to  the  Bishop  of  Natal  who  could 
give  utterance  to  them.  When  the  first  Missionary 
Bishop  of  Africa  who  translated  the  Bible  into  the 
language  of  the  natives,  shall  be  called  to  his  rest,  I 
trust  that  there  will  be  found  some  Prelate  presiding 
over  the  See  of  Capetown  just  and  generous  enough 
to  render  the  like  homage  to  the  Bishop  of  Natal." 


110  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  m. 

Lastly,  in  the  midst  of  a  stormy  and  almost  tumultu- 
ous scene  at  a  meeting  of  the  venerable  Society  for  the 
Propagation  of  the  Gospel,  in  the  early  part  of  the 
year  before  that  in  which  he  died,  he  once  more  stood 
forth  as  the  solitary  and  undaunted  champion  of  one 
for  whom  he  had  pleaded  years  before  as  "absent, 
friendless,  unpopular,"  "  as  attacked  by  every  epithet 
which  the  English  language  has  been  able  to  furnish 
against  him."  "  The  Bishop  of  Natal,"  he  said,  "  is 
the  one  Colonial  Bishop  who  has  translated  the  Bible 
into  the  language  of  the  natives  of  his  diocese.  He 
is  the  one  Colonial  Bishop  who,  when  he  believed  a 
native  to  be  wronged,  left  his  diocese,  journeyed  to 
London,  and  never  rested  till  he  had  procured  the  re- 
versal of  that  wrong.  He  is  the  one  Colonial  Bishop 
who,  as  soon  as  he  had  done  this,  returned  immedi- 
ately to  his  diocese  and  his  work.  For  these  acts  he 
has  never  received  any  praise,  any  encouragement 
from  this  the  oldest  of  our  Missionary  Societies.  For 
these  deeds  he  will  be  remembered  when  you  who 
censure  him  are  dead,  buried,  and  forgotten." 

It  was  surely  not  without  reason  that  one  of  your 
own  foremost  Divines  spoke  of  him  as  "the  champion 
of  the  vilified  name,  the  lost  cause." 

Let  me  pass  on  now  to  his  official  life  as  Dean  of 
Westminster.  How  deep,  how  intense  was  his  interest 
in  the  venerable  fabric  committed  to  his  care,  I  need 
not  say.  Within  three  years  of  his  appointment  he 
had  completed,  incredible  as  it  may  appear,  his  "  Me- 
morials of  Westminster  Abbey."  To  that  thick  volume, 


CHAP,  in.]      ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  Ill 

crowded  with  information  of  every  kiiid,  men  of  slower 
powers  of  work  might  have  devoted  half  their  lives. 
It  is  a  full  guide  to  all  the  treasures  of  that  vast  his- 
torical museum.  It  is  deficient  only  on  the  architectu- 
ral side,  for  of  architecture  he  would  sometimes  plead 
as  entire  ignorance  as  of  music.  But  with  all  the  ac- 
cumulated knowledge  ready  for  him  in  existing  works, 
and  with  all  the  help  gladly  given  him  by  friendly 
hands  and  heads,  it  is  a  really  prodigious  work.  He 
himself  spoke  lightly  of  it.  Its  very  diffuseness  of 
aim,  and  its  encyclopedic  character  wearied  him,  and, 
as  he  said  to  his  friend,  Max  Miiller,  "it  carried  him 
too  far  away  from  the  vital  questions  of  the  age." 

But  in  scarcely  one  of  these  "  vital  questions  "  was 
he  more  interested  than  in  the  Abbey  itself.  To 
commend  its  treasures  to  the  public,  to  interest  in  its 
monuments  and  walls,  and  services,  every  class  of  his 
countrymen,  soon  became  to  him  one  of  the  most  vital 
of  all  questions.  There  is  hardly  a  corner  in  the  Abbey 
on  which  he  did  not  throw  some  new  light:  now  pene- 
trating underground  till  he  had  tracked  the  coffin  of 
the  first  Scottish  King  of  England  to  its  forgotten  home 
in  the  vault  of  Henry  VII. ;  now  placing  in  her  hus- 
band's chantry  the  neglected  remains  of  Catherine  of 
Valois ;  now  carefully  and  reverently  replacing  the 
recovered  fragments  of  the  desecrated  tomb  of  the 
young  Protestant  King,  Edward  VI.  His  hand  and 
spirit  may  be  traced  in  the  brightly  tinted  .leaves  of 
an  American  autumn,  that  speak  a  message  of  recon- 
ciliation over  the  bones  of  Andre* ;  in  the  monument, 


112  RECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  in. 

with  its  characteristic  inscription,  erected  to  the  two 
Wesleys;  in  the  faint  reproduction  of  the  sun  shining 
on  Boston  Harbour,  which  forms  part  of  the  memo- 
rial window  which  he  raised  to  the  memory  of  his  lost 
wife.  It  was  his  delight  to  take  eminent  strangers — 
now  a  king,  now  a  general,  now  a  literary  man,  now  a 
party  of  children,  now  a  listening  friend,  from  tomb 
to  tomb ;  to  answer  their  questions  and  pour  out  his 
knowledge.  Rarely  did  a  Saturday  pass  in  spring  or 
summer  without  his  accompanying  a  party  of  work- 
ing-men from  end  to  end,  through  Jerusalem  Cham- 
ber, Chapter-House,  and  Abbey ;  often  ending  the 
fatiguing  task  by  giving  them  a  simple  meal,  and 
occasionally  showing  them  the  curiosities  of  the  Dean- 
ery. In  that  ancient  house  of  the  Abbots  of  West- 
minster and  earlier  Deans  he  took  the  profoundest 
interest.  His  malediction  will  fall,  I  am  sure,  on  the 
first  of  his  successors  who  shall  substitute  modern 
apartments  for  those  antique  gables  and  not  wholly 
commodious  bed-rooms.  The  restoration  of  the  Chap- 
ter-House, the  cradle  of  English  Parliamentary  life, 
inaugurated  under  his  predecessor,  was  vigorously 
urged  on  the  Government  and  completed  at  last,  all 
but  the  windows.  Every  detail  of  the  design  for 
these  last  was  arranged  by  himself,  and  will  be  com- 
pleted, in  great  part  at  least,  as  a  fitting  monument 
to  his  memory.  Had  he  never  preached  a  sermon, 
never  published  a  line,  never  made  a  single  speech, 
never  appeared  in  public  on  any  general  question,  he 
would  have  made  his  mark  in  those  ancient  precincts 
as  a  memorable  Dean. 


CHAP,  in.]      ARTHUR  PENEHYN  STANLEY.  113 

For  preaching  too,  and  that  from  the  most  inspiring, 
to  him,  of  all  pulpits,  he  had  now  the  ample  scope 
that  was  grudged  him  at  the  University,  and  he  was 
able  to  fulfil  the  promise  which  he  had  made  in  his 
parting  sermon  at  Oxford.  If  to  preach  was,  strictly 
speaking,  his  proper  and  official  duty  on  three  Sundays 
only  in  the  year,  yet  the  special  circumstances  of  the 
Chapter  gave  him  abundant  opportunities ;  and  Sun- 
day after  Sunday  men  and  women,  including  many 
whom  few  preachers  would  have  drawn  to  worship, 
crowded  to  hear  him.  If  there  were  times,  as  must 
needs  have  been  the  case  in  one  who  preached  so  often 
and  so  readily,  when  the  quality  of  his  sermons  fell 
in  some  respects  below  what  had  been  looked  for,  yet 
the  voice,  the  manner,  the  face,  the  tones,  were  some- 
thing that  could  be  found  nowhere  else,  and  at  his 
best  —  in,  for  instance,  such  occasional  sermons  as  he 
himself  chose  for  publication,  or  such  as  are  contained 
in  a  volume  published  since  his  death — he  had  for 
striking  and  moving  eloquence  few  rivals  in  any 
English-speaking  community  of  Christians.  Read  his 
funeral  sermon  on  Charles  Kingsley,  on  Sir  John 
Herschel,  on  your  own  countryman  Carlyle,  or  that 
preached  on  the  Siege  of  Paris.  Who  else  in  the 
United  Kingdom  could  have  preached  them  ?  Read, 
indeed,  any  of  his  published  sermons.  We  may  say  as 
Dr.  Johnson  said  of  Baxter's,  "  Read  any ;  they  are 
all  good."  Read  any,  we  may  add,  for  they  are  all 
characteristic,  all  stamped  with  his  own  impress.  No 
one  else  in  the  world  could  have  written  them.  I  have 


114  EECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  HI. 

heard  it  said  that  it  was  worth  a  considerable  journey 
to  hear  him  read  in  the  Abbey  certain  lessons  from  the 
New  and  even  more  from  the  Old  Testament.  He  had 
a  wonderful  genius  for  finding  in  the  services  of  the 
day  a  happy  and  felicitous  guide  for  the  subject  of  his 
sermon.  On  a  Sunday  when  the  Shah  of  Persia  was  in 
London,  he  had  to  preach  to  a  regiment  of  volunteers. 
His  text  was  drawn  from  the  Book  of  Esther,  which 
had  formed  for  some  days  past  the  daily  lessons. 
The  greatest  personage  in  that  book  was  "  the  very 
last  King  of  Persia  who  from  that  time  to  the  present 
had  visited  Europe,"  and  the  text  Avas  taken  from 
words  of  devoted  patriotism  —  a  very  motto  and  watch- 
word for  citizen  soldiers  —  uttered  by  Esther  herself. 
I  have  already  spoken  of  his  preaching  on  the  re- 
gathering  of  the  brethren  of  Joseph  which  formed  the 
morning  lesson  on  the  Sunday  after  his  hearing  of  his 
mother's  death ;  the  text  "  Abraham  went  down  to 
Egypt  to  sojourn  there"  he  drew  from  the  same 
source  for  his  first  sermon  in  Egypt.  The  same 
dexterous  readiness  in  catching  analogies  and  simi 
larities  which  gave  such  a  charm  to  his  conversa 
tion,  stood  him  also  in  good  stead  on  very  different 
occasions.  In  preaching,  for  instance,  to  the  men 
employed  at  the  great  Agricultural  Show  at  Isling- 
ton, he  was  able  to  find  ennobling  memories  even  for 
the  drovers  of  swine,  if  not  in  the  associations  of 
Holy  Scripture,  yet  in  the  faithful  Gurth  of  Walter 
Scott,  and  in  the  even  more  faithful  Euinseus  of  the 
"  Odyssey." 


CHAP,  in.]      AETHUE  PENEHYN  STANLEY.  115 

But  you  in  Scotland  have  heard  him  preach,  and 
need  no  eulogies  of  mine. 

You  will  now,  perhaps,  expect  his  successor  to  say 
something  at  greater  length  than  he  has  yet  said  of  his 
theological  position.  Yet  what  I  have  already  said  is 
the  key  to  all  that  I  could  say.  He  stood  aloof,  abso- 
lutely aloof,  from  all  parties  in  the  Church.  "  I  can- 
not," he  said,  in  a  letter  to  one  of  his  dearest  friends, 
"  go  out  to  battle  in  Saul's  armour :  I  must  fight  with 
my  own  sling  and  stone  or  not.  at  all.  I  have  never 
been  able  to  reconcile  myself  to  these  unreasoning, 
undiscriminating  war-cries :  whatever  power  I  have 
been  able  to  exert  has  been  mainly  derived  from  this 
abstinence." 

Towards  the  close  of  his  life,  after  quoting  a  famous 
passage  on  party  spirit  from  Robert  Hall,  that  opens 
with  "  Whatever  retards  a  spirit  of  inquiry  is  favour- 
able to  error,  whatever  promotes  it  is  favourable  to 
truth,"  he  added  one  of  his  favourite  remarks :  "  This 
spirit  of  combination  for  party  purposes,  and  this 
alone,  is  what  the  New  Testament  calls  heresy,  and 
this,"  he  added,  "constitutes  the  leading  danger  of 
synods  and  of  councils." 

Yet  he  was  never  ashamed  of  the  title  of  "  liberal 
theologian,"  not  even  "  if  he  were  to  be  the  last  who 

O  ' 

was  to  bear  the  name,"  and  he  was  the  first  to  give 
currency  to  the  much  used  term  "  Broad  Church." 
Liberal  theology,  he  spoke  of,  in  one  of  the  very  latest 
of  his  addresses,  as  being  "  the  backbone  of  the 
Church  of  England,"  and  he  claimed  for  it  an  "  or- 


116  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  in. 

thodoxy,  a  biblical,  evangelical,  Catholic  character 
which  its  opponents  have  never  reached." 

What,  you  will  ask,  did  he  mean  by  this  ?  I  can 
give  you  no  better  answer  than  in  words  of  his  own ; 
his  theological  views  are  repeated  over  and  over  again 
with  a  monotony  which  is  never  monotonous  in  all 
that  ever  came  from  his  lips  or  pen. 

Let  me  say  first,  that  he  was  not,  as  you  all  know, 
a  lover  of  dogma.  His  dear  friend,  your  countryman, 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  said  of  him  that  "  no 
true  believer  in  Christianity  was  ever  more  abhorrent 
of  dogmatism,"  and  adds  that  "  he  was  almost  bigoted 
against  bigotry,  and  almost  intolerant  of  intolerance." 
But  though  this  is  quite  true,  I  feel  inclined  to  quote 
some  wise  and  discriminating  words  used  by  a  much 
respected  writer  in  reference  to  his  dear  friend  Hugh 
Pearson,  whose  death  soon  followed  his  own,  and  who, 
as  I  have  already  said,  for  over  forty  years  had  shared 
every  thought  and  feeling  as  none  other  of  his  friends: — 

"  There  will  probably  always  be  two  schools  of 
opinion  respecting  the  true  relations  between  Chris- 
tian doctrine  or  dogma  and  Christian  morals ;  the  one 
of  those  who  think  that  the  true  spirit  of  the  Gospel 
has  been  fettered,  if  not  perverted,  by  being  too  much 
tied  to  doctrine,  the  other  of  those  who  believe  that 
in  the  careful  custody  of  the  faith,  in  every  particular, 
out  of  which  Christian  ethics  sprang,  is  to  be  found 
the  only  security  for  their  permanent  vitality  and 
power.  The  Vicar  of  Sonning  "  (let  me  substitute 
the  name  of  the  Dean  of  Westminster)  "  unquestiona- 


CHAP,  in.]      ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  117 

bly  belonged  to  the  former  school.  He  had  a  devout 
faith  in  the  power  and  love  of  God,  a  profound  rever- 
ence and  love  for  Jesus  Christ,  and  an  absolute  con- 
viction that  the  truest  wisdom  and  highest  happiness 
of  man  were  to  be  found  in  the  study  and  the  imita- 
tion of  that  holy,  lovely,  and  beautiful  life.  This  was 
the  sum  and  substance  of  his  religion,  this  was  really 
the  key-note  of  all  his  sermons.  To  this  he  turned 
from  doctrinal  questions  with  something  like  con- 
tempt, and  some  might  think  with  too  little  consid- 
eration or  perception  of  the  bearing  of  such  questions 
upon  the  practical  life.  The  whole  condition  of  his 
mind  on  this  subject  might  be  summed  up  in  the 
verses  of  Charles  Wesley  on  Catholic  Love  :  — 

1  Weary  of  all  this  wordy  strife, 
These  notions,  forms,  and  modes  and  names, 

To  Thee,  the  Way,  the  Truth,  the  Life, 
Whose  love  my  simple  heart  inflames  — 

Divinely  taught  at  last  I  fly, 
With  Thee  and  Thine  to  live  and  die.'  " 

He  was  never,  as  you  know,  weary  of  repeating,  1st, 
"  that  the  essential  superiority  of  Christianity  to  all 
other  religions  in  the  world,  lay  in  its  resting  on  a 
Divine  life,  a  life  that  was  the  image  of  God,  because 
he  who  lived  it  was  all  goodness  and  truth  "  ;  2ndly, 
"  that  its  essential  object  was  to  produce  characters 
which  in  truthfulness,  in  independence,  in  mercy,  in 
purity,  in  charity,  may  recall  something  of  the  mind 
that  was  in  Christ " ;  3rdly,  "  that  what  makes  a  man  a 
Christian  is  to  have  the  character  of  Christ,"  "  a  Mas- 


118  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  in. 

ter  worth  living  for,  worth  dying  for,  whose  spirit  was 
to  be  the  regenerating  power  of  the  whole  world." 

It  is  in  the  light  of  this  intense  feeling  for  goodness 
and  for  truth  as  revealed  in  Christ,  and  presenting  to 
mankind  a  standard  which  system  after  system  of 
theology  had  only  dimly  realised  —  "as  having  far,  far 
more  in  it,"  as  he  delighted  to  say  of  the  Bible,  "  than 
has  ever  been  taken  out  of  it," — that  we  must  view  his 
dissatisfaction  with  the  imperfections  of  the  past,  "  the 
old  theological  Adam  striving  in  each  successive  gen- 
eration to  maintain  his  own  against  the  new  Christian 
spiritual  Adam."  Hence  his  reiterated  claim  to  place 
"all  that  was  ceremonial,  all  that  was  dogmatic,  even 
all  that  was  miraculous,  on  a  lower  level  among  the 
essential  elements  of  Christianity  than  what  was  moral 
or  spiritual."  Hence  his  bold  assertion  "  that  the 
greatest  of  all  miracles  is  the  character  of  Christ." 
Hence  his  urgent  advice  to  his  American  friends  "to 
feel  truly  the  littleness  of  what  is  little,  as  well  as  the 
greatness  of  what  is  great ;  to  distinguish  what  is  out- 
ward from  what  is  inward,  what  is  accidental  from  what 
is  essential,  what  is  temporary  from  what  is  eternal." 
Hence  his  fondness  for  the  story  of  the  French  pastor 
asking  on  his  death-bed  his  friends  "  to  pray  for  him 
that  he  might  have  the  elementary  graces ; "  or  of  the 
old  Scottish  Methodist,  laying  aside  in  his  dying  mo- 
ments the  narrow  sympathies  of  his  earlier  years  in 
the  words  "  if  power  were  given  me  I  would  preach 
purity  of  life  more  and  purity  of  doctrine  less."  On 
the  realisation  of  this  idea  of  a  wider  Christianity,  "if 


CHAP,  in.]      ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  119 

not  in  this  century,"  as  he  said  in  America,  "  yet  in 
the  next  or  in  the  next  but  one,"  "  even  if  he  were  to  be 
the  last  not  to  despair  of  his  religion  and  his  Church," 
"  even  if  a  partial  eclipse  were  at  hand,"  —  on  this  he 
rested  all  his  hopes  of  the  triumph  of  faith  over  un- 
belief. At  times,  no  doubt,  his  heart  seemed  to  fail 
him.  "  Those  younger  than  himself  might  live,"  he 
said,  "  to  see  a  brighter  and  happier  day  than  that 
which  seems  to  overcloud  the  minds,  and  oppress  the 
hopes,  of  those  who  live  in  the  latter  part  of  this  nine- 
teenth century."  "  The  immediate  future  "  seemed 
to  him  "  sometimes  darkened  by  an  eclipse  of  faith, 
sometimes  by  an  eclipse  of  reason."  But  he  never 
seriously  relinquished  the  hope  —  call  it,  if  you  will, 
an  idle  dream  —  that  he  expressed,  as  elsewhere,  so 
in  Scotland,  "  that,  in  spite  of  cynical  indifference  or 
growing  superstition,  it  would  yet  be  shown  that 
Christianity  —  a  Catholic,  comprehensive,  all-embra- 
cing Christianity  —  was  not  dead  or  dying,  but  in- 
stinct with  immortal  life" —  "that  Christianity  in  its 
wider  aspect  may  yet  overcome  the  world."  It  was  to 
this  indestructible  faith  in  the  real  vitality  of  what  he 
held  to  be  "  the  essentials  of  Christianity,"  that  we 
may  refer  his  impatience  under  all  stringent  subscrip- 
tions to  church  formularies  and  confessions  of  faith  as 
tending  to  alienate  Christian  from  Christian,  Church 
from  Church,  and  to  retard  the  progress  for  which  he 
sighed.  "  All  confessions  and  similar  documents  are," 
he  said,  "if  taken  as  final  expressions  of  absolute 
truth,  misleading,"  and  he  speaks  of  a  church  "  whose 
glory  it  is  to  be  always  advancing  to  perfection." 


120  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  ra. 

Truth  he  was  ready  to  welcome  from  any  quarter. 
It  was  in  the  firm  conviction  that  "  Truth  was  to  be 
sought  above  all  things  for  itself  and  not  for  any 
ulterior  object,"  that  he  refused  to  be  appalled  at  any 
discoveries,  real  or  supposed,  of  physical  science,  but 
was  ready  to  welcome  all  as  elements  of  a  larger  sys- 
tem. "  However  far,"  he  said,  "  we  may  trace  back 
the  material  parts  of  man,  from  whatever  earlier  forms 
of  existence  it  may  be  possible  to  derive  the  bodily 
frame  which  we  possess  in  common  with  other  parts  of 
creation,  no  one  can  go  further  back  or  deeper  down 
than  St.  Paul  or  the  Book  of  Genesis  have  already  led 
us.  '  The  first  man  is  of  the  earth  earthy,'  says  St. 
Paul ;  *  The  Lord  God  made  man  of  the  dust  of  the 
earth,'  says  the  Book  of  Genesis.  In  neither  the 
biblical  nor  the  scientific  account,  can  the  descrip- 
tion affect  or  destroy  our  knowledge,  our  certainty 
of  what  he  is  now.  What  would  be  fatal  to  our 
hopes,  would  be  to  be  told,  that  because  our  first 
man  was  of  the  earth,  earthy,  therefore  all  our  higher 
and  nobler  desires  and  hopes  and  affections  are  also  of 
the  earth,  earthy.  This  would  indeed  make  us,  as 
St.  Paul  says,  '  of  all  creatures  the  most  miserable.' " 
And  he  protests  against  "driving  into  the  devil's 
camp "  all  the  leaders  in  such  inquiries,  just  as  he 
protests  elsewhere  against  using,  by  way  of  disparage- 
ment, such  words  as  "  deist "  or  "  theist,"  on  the  ground 
that  "where  this  belief  remains,  the  true  supernatural, 
the  true  ideal,  immaterial  ground  is  not  abandoned." 
Scotsmen  know  well  how  eager  he  was  to  find  points 


CHAP,  m.]      ARTHUR  PENEUYN  STANLEY.  121 

of  agreement  and  similarity  in  dissident  churches, 
and  the  reproach  of  a  late  venerable  Oxford  Pro 
fessor  that  "  he  had  an  eye  for  resemblances  but  not 
for  differences,"  he  welcomed  as  the  highest  praise. 
"  Make  the  most,"  he  said,  in  a  sermon  preached  in 
Old  Grey  Friars'  Church,  "  of  what  there  is  of  good 
in  institutions,  in  opinions,  in  communities,  in  indi- 
viduals." He  had,  as  you  know,  an  avowed,  a  warm, 
an  almost  passionate  preference  for  the  much  decried 
principle  of  an  "  Established  Church,"  for  the  union, 
wherever  possible,  of  Church  and  State.  He  would 
dwell,  to  the  astonishment  no  doubt  of  conscientious 
dissenters,  "on  the  enlarging  and  elevating  influence 
infused  into  a  religious  institution  by  its  contact, 
however  slight,  with  so  magnificent  an  ordinance  as 
the  British  Commonwealth,  by  its  having  for  its  aim 
the  highest  welfare  of  the  whole  community."  "  That 
connection  which  Chalmers  had  vindicated  in  the 
interest  of  Christian  philanthropy,  had,"  he  said,  "  in 
these  latter  days  more  and  more  commended  itself 
in  the  interest  of  Christian  liberty."  And  he  was 
never  tired  of  enlarging  on  the  "  soothing,  moderat- 
ing, comprehensive  spirit  of  the  Church  of  England." 
Yet  not  the  less  he  could  thank  the  Baptists  for 
having  "almost  alone  in  the  Western  Church  pre- 
served intact  one  singular  and  interesting  relic  of  prim- 
itive and  apostolic  times  which  we  have,"  he  adds, 
"at  least  in  our  practice,  wisely  discarded."  He 
could  point  to  their  Bunyan,  Robert  Hall,  and  Have- 
lock,  as  men  who  taught  us  that  "  there  was  a  ground 


122  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  m. 

of  communion  which  no  difference  of  external  rites 
could  ever  efface."  He  could  thank  Quakerism  for 
"  having  unfurled  before  the  eyes  of  Christendom  not 
the  flag  of  Avar  but  of  peace ; "  for  "  dwelling  even  with 
exaggerated  force  on  the  insignificance  of  all  forms, 
of  all  authority,  as  compared  with  the  inward  light 
of  conscience."  "  The  work  of  dissenting  churches 
is,"  he  said  in  Scotland,  "  to  keep  alive  that  peculiar 
force  of  devotion  and  warmth  which  is  apt  to  die 
out  in  the  light  of  reason,  and  in  the  breath  of  free 
inquiry."  "  We  cannot  safely  dispense,"  he  said  in 
America,  after  a  sermon  full  of  wisdom  on  the  char- 
acteristics of  the  Roman,  the  Eastern,  the  Lutheran, 
and  the  Calvinistic  systems,  "  even  with  the  churches 
which  we  most  dislike,  and  which  in  other  respects 
have  wrought  most  evil."  If  he  felt  that  the  absolute 
and  corporate  re-union  of  Churches  was  in  some 
cases  undesirable,  in  others  impracticable,  he  did  all 
that  lay  in  his  power  to  advocate  and  to  promote  a 
friendly  inter-communion.  You  know  how  gladly  he 
preached  in  the  pulpits  of  the  Scottish  Establishment, 
how  joyfully  he  would  have  opened  to  your  own 
clergy  the  pulpit  of  an  Abbey  which  he  loved  to  call 
"  the  consecrated  temple  of  reconciled  ecclesiastical 
enmities,"  how  in  the  absence  of  freedom  fully  to 
effect  this,  he  rejoiced  to  hear,  if  not  in  the  pulpit, 
yet  beneath  the  roof  of  that  Abbey,  the  voice  of  a 
layman  like  Max  Miiller,  of  Scotsmen  such  as  Prin- 
cipals Caird  and  Tulloch,  of  such  an  English  Noncon- 
formist as  Dr.  Stoughton.  How  gladly  did  he  dwell  on 


CHAP.  HI.]      ARTHUR  PENRHTN  STANLEY.  123 

the  manner  in  which  men  like  Milton  or  John  Bunyan, 
or  Thomas  A'Kempis  or  Keble,  or  the  writers  of  great 
hymns,  rise  unconsciously  above  their  own  peculiar 
views,  "  above  the  limits  that  divide  denominations, 
into  the  higher  region  of  a  common  Christianity." 
How  he  delighted  in  the  words  of  your  own  Dr. 
Chalmers,  "  who  cares  about  any  Church  except  as  an 
instrument  of  doing  good?"  or  of  Dr.  Duncan,  the 
Free  Church  sage,  who  was  "  first  a  Christian,  then 
a  Catholic,  then  a  Calvinist,  then  a  Paedo-Baptist, 
and  fifthly  a  Presb}7terian,"  who  avowed  "  that  there 
was  a  progress  in  all  things  and  therefore  in  religion ; " 
who,  though  a  staunch  Protestant  and  disliker  of 
image  worship,  could  never  banish  the  touching  mem- 
ory of  a  rude  image  of  his  Saviour  which  he  had  seen 
cut  on  a  granite  cross  in  Hungary.  How  he  rejoiced 
in  the  conviction  of  John  Wesley's  dearest  friend 
that  "  the  main,  fundamental,  overpowering  principle 
of  his  life  was  not  the  promotion  of  any  particular  doc- 
trine, but  the  elevation  of  the  whole  Christian  world 
in  the  great  principles  of  Christian  holiness  and  moral- 
ity." How  often  has  he  quoted  the  words  of  Zwingli- 
us,  u  of  the  meeting  in  the  presence  of  God  of  every 
blessed  spirit,  every  holy  character,  every  faithful  soul 
that  has  existed  from  the  beginning  of  the  world  even 
to  the  consummation  thereof."  His  own  words,  as 
applied  to  Richard  Baxter,  sum  up  all  that  under  this 
head  can  be  said  of  himself :  "In  a  stormy  and  divided 
age  he  advocated  unity  and  comprehension.  Many  oth- 
er thoughts  abounded  in  that  teeming  brain,  but  they 


124  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  in. 

were  more  or  less  secondary.  Other  messages  of  divine 
or  human  truth  were  delivered  with  more  force  and 
consistency  by  others  of  his  time,  but  in  the  solemn 
proclamation  of  this  message  he  stood  pre-eminent." 
You  can  imagine,  or  you  know  in  part,  how  fierce  a 
spirit  of  opposition  all  this  —  and  I  have  read  you  only 
some  fair  specimens  of  his  habitual  teaching  —  must 
have  provoked  in  some  minds.  As  those  whose  duty 
it  is  to  do  so,  read  the  fierce  invectives,  the  malignant 
insinuations  which  were  launched  against  that  noble 
spirit,  so  full  of  the  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteous- 
ness, so  glowing  with  an  all-embracing  charity  towards 
every  human  soul,  it  is  easy  to  repress  what  might 
seem  a  natural,  a  righteous  resentment.  So  clear  is  it, 
if  not  on  which  side  lies  the  victory  in  argument,  or 
the  hope  of  immediate  success,  yet  on  which  side  is 
the  spirit  of  Christ.  Let  me  give  you,  if  you  wish 
for  criticism  —  you  will  have  none  from  me  —  some- 
thing more  worthy  of  himself.  A  lecture  which  he 
once  delivered  is  thus  described  by  a  member  of  the 
Society  of  Friends,  one  who  did  not  wholly  share 
his  views,  yet  deeply  sympathised  with  and  greatly 
reverenced  him.  "  The  subject  was,  '  The  points  in 
the  Christian  creed  which  are  held  by  all  Christians.' 
It  was  full  of  his  own  wonderful  and  all-embracing 
charity,  and  he  seemed  to  lift  his  whole  audience  into 
a  higher  sphere  as  he  spoke.  The  soul  was  soothed 
and  cheered  by  listening  to  him.  Perhaps  the  intellect 
was  not  altogether  satisfied.  If  any  man  could  have 
succeeded  in  finding  and  describing  the  common  stand- 


CHAP,  in.]      ARTHUR  PENEHYN  STANLEY.  125 

ing  ground  of  Roman  Catholic  and  Unitarian,  it  would 
have  been  he.  But  I  think  that  one  or  two  of  us  felt 
that  not  even  he  had  quite  succeeded  in  finding  that 
common  formula."  Ah !  how  different  this  thoughtful 
language  to  the  taunts  of  some  of  his  own  communion. 

"  He  spoke  after  his  lecture,"  the  same  observer  adds, 
"  of  the  manner  in  which  '  Ecce  Homo  '  had  been  re- 
ceived by  the  different  sections  of  the  Christian  Church. 
Each  one  had  found  something  in  the  book  which  har- 
monised with  its  own  special  views.  This  seemed  to 
him  an  illustration  of  the  wonderful  manifoldness  of 
our  Lord's  character,  'that  character,'  he  said,  'which 
is  the  foundation  of  the  Church.' "  His  host  adds  an 
interesting  reminiscence  of  his  speaking  of  the  Found- 
er of  Buddhism.  "  I  remember,"  said  Stanley,  "  the 
time  when  the  name  of  Gautama  was  scarcely  known, 
except  to  a  few  scholars,  and  not  always  well  spoken 
of  by  those  who  knew  it,  and  now  —  he  stands  second." 
"  There  was  something,"  we  are  told,  "  very  impres- 
sive in  the  way  in  which  he  said  this  —  with  hands 
and  eyes  uplifted,  leaving  the  name  of  the  First  un- 
spoken." Those  who  knew  him  will  easily  fill  up  the 
outlines  of  the  picture. 

You  would  wish  me,  I  think,  to  say  something  of 
the  position  which  he  held  towards  the  working  classes 
in  London,  and  in  the  nation  generally.  This  also 
was  unique  of  its  kind,  and  difficult  at  first  sight 
to  define  or  account  for.  Other  men  have  devoted 
themselves  far  more  exclusively  and  more  assiduously 
to  promoting  their  welfare.  Other  men  have  spoken, 


126  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  in. 

preached,  and  written  in  a  style  far  more  directly 
adapted  to  their  opinions  and  tastes.  He  had  little,  at 
least  in  early  life,  of  his  father's  frank,  ready,  sailor-like 
power  of  at  once  placing  himself  on  a  level  with  less 
educated  strangers.  He  had  never  toiled  and  laboured 
like  his  sister,  Mary  Stanley,  in  the  details  of  hospital 
life,  or  of  organising  industrial  and  other  means  of 
relieving  distress  and  encouraging  self  dependence. 
It  was  not  till  he  was  established  at  Westminster 
that  he  came  into  any  specially  close  or  permanent 
contact  with  what  are  called  the  working  classes. 
While  still  at  Oxford  he  had  been  deeply  interested 
in  efforts  made  by  his  warm  friends,  Mr.  Thomas 
Hughes  and  the  Rev.  Septimus  Hansard,  under  the 
inspiration  of  Mr.  Frederic  Maurice,  in  conjunction 
with  the  late  Mr.  Kingsley  and  others,  to  raise  the 
condition  of  the  London  operatives ;  and  it  is  needless 
to  say  that,  with  Lady  Augusta  by  his  side,  he  gave  the 
aid  of  his  presence  and  his  sympathy  to  various  move- 
ments that  tended  to  promote  their  welfare.  Very  soon 
he  won  his  way  to  their  hearts,  and  was  a  welcome 
visitor  at  their  meetings.  There  remains  at  the  Dean- 
ery an  address  presented  to  him  by  the  working-men 
of  Westminster  on  his  reaching  his  60th  birthday ;  a 
cheering  memorial  of  their  good  wishes  as  the  shadows 
of  life  began  to  darken  round  him.  He  early  formed 
the  habit,  which  he  never  laid  aside,  of  conducting 
Saturday  parties  of  working-men  round  the  Abbey, 
explaining,  as  no  one  else  could,  the  principal  monu- 
ments, and  endeavouring  to  interest  them  in  the  past 


CHAP,  m.]      ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  127 

greatness  of  their  common  country,  by  trying,  in  lan- 
guage used  by  himself  at  his  Installation  sermon,  "  to 
draw  out  the  marvellous  tale  that  lies  imprisoned  in 
those  dead  stones,  and  make  each  sepulchre  give  up 
again  to  life  its  illustrious  dead."  I  have  been  favoured 
with  more  than  one  description  of  such  afternoons, 
written  by  working-men  who  had  been  admitted  to  a 
privilege  which  the  most  exalted  personages  delighted 
to  enjoy.  In  such  tours  of  the  Abbey  or  in  the  visits 
to  the  Deanery  that  occasionally  followed  them  were 
laid,  at  times,  the  seeds  of  future  intimacy  with  indi- 
viduals. Yet  I  feel  that  these  details  throw  but  a  faint 
light  on  his  relation  to  the  men  of  whom  I  speak.  It  is 
not  the  thing  done  —  that  is  in  the  reach,  if  not  of  any 
one  yet  of  many  —  it  is  in  the  manner  in  which  he  did 
it  that  the  charm  lay.  I  might  easily  enumerate  other 
claims  to  gratitude  :  his  promotion  of  coffee-houses  and 
libraries,  his  hearty  sympathy  with  the  Working-Men's 
Club  and  Institute  Union,  of  which  he  was  elected 
President,  his  care  to  have  every  monument  in  the 
Abbey  carefully  lettered  and  described ;  but  I  feel  that 
no  list  of  such  services  will,  in  itself,  account  for  the 
place  he  held  in  the  affections  of  his  countrymen.  The 
truth  was  that  the  same  sympathetic  fibre,  the  same 
indescribable  gift  for  winning  hearts,  which  was  con- 
stantly binding  to  him  new  friends  among  his  own 
class,  and  which  made  his  death  felt,  in  America  as  in 
England,  as  a  personal  loss  by  multitudes  who  had 
never  seen  him,  told  with  no  less  force  on  a  class  not 
often  interested  in  the  life  arid  death  of  an  ecclesiasti- 


128  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  in. 

cal  dignitary.  Its  effect  was  clearly  marked  when  he 
was  laid  in  his  grave.  It  was  not  only  that  the  Abbey 
and  its  approaches  were  thronged  to  the  very  full  by 
humble  worshippers,  or  that  in  the  meanest  streets  in 
the  neighbourhood  there  was  scarcely  a  shop  or  a 
public-house  that  was  not  partially  closed  as  for  a  death 
in  the  family,  or  that — as  was  said  at  the  time  by  one 
familiar  with  the  purlieus  of  Westminster  —  "  the  hard- 
est roughs  seemed  softened  by  his  name."  This  might 
have  been  in  a  measure  due  to  years  of  ready  benefi- 
cence and  well-tried  sympathy  on  the  part  of  Lady 
Augusta,  his  sister,  and  himself.  But  the  feeling  ex- 
tended far  beyond  the  vicinity  of  the  Abbey.  In  a 
great  northern  seat  of  industry,  one  who  was  coming 
up  from  the  Yorkshire  Moors  to  bear  his  part  in  that 
sad  funeral,  heard  a  working-man,  as  he  put  his  son 
into  the  train,  bid  him,  in  Yorkshire  dialect,  "  tak  care 
of  himself  at  the  burying,"  and  a  few  moments'  conver- 
sation startled  him  by  the  interest  shown  in  the  loss 
which  was  saddening  his  own  heart.  The  same  trav- 
eller spent  the  next  two  months  in  a  Midland  town, 
where  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  some  of  the  leading 
operatives ;  and  there,  to  his  astonishment,  he  found 
the  name  of  Stanley,  introduced  in  conversation  by 
men  who  were  not  aware  that  the  new  comer  was  his 
friend,  act  at  once  as  a  passport  to  their  confidence. 
How  was  it  ?  I  must  leave  those  who  have  felt  the 
spell  of  his  presence,  of  his  face,  his  voice,  his  greet- 
ing, to  add  to  these  his  reputation  for  chivalry  and 
courage  and  eloquence,  and  sympathy  with  all  who 


CHAP,  m.]      ARTHUR  PENRHTN  STANLEY.  129 

needed  sympathy,  and  the  wide-spread  sense  that  he 
was  the  same  man  in  the  atmosphere  of  a  court  as  at 
a  meeting  of  working-men ;  that  to  use  once  more 
words  quoted  by  himself  but  applied  to  another, 
"  he  feared  no  man's  displeasure,  and  hoped  for  no 
man's  preferment,"  and  so  to  find  a  key  to  the  un- 
doubted hold  which  that  scion  of  an  ancient  family 
had  won  on  the  affection  of  the  best  representatives 
of  our  toiling  millions. 

I  need  not  remind  you  how  deeply,  how  univer- 
sally he  was  mourned.  "  He  was  borne  to  his  grave," 
it  was  truly  said,  "  on  the  shoulders  of  the  nation." 
It  may  be  no  less  truly  said  that  the  feelings  which 
he  inspired  were  a  real  force  in  breaking  down,  or  at 
least  softening,  that  alienation  of  classes  which  is  the 
most  formidable  of  all  dangers  to  existing  institu- 
tions. When  the  foremost  men  in  England,  the 
leaders  in  Parliament,  in  society,  in  science  and 
literature,  in  church  and  state,  met  in  the  Chapter 
House  of  Westminster  to  do  honour  to  his  memory, 
no  testimony  was  more  impressive  than  that  borne  by 
one  who  represented  neither  high  rank,  nor  political 
office,  nor  ecclesiastical  dignity,  but  the  working-men 
who  mourned  the  loss  not  so  much  of  a  benefactor  as 
of  a  friend.  And  they  were  not  mistaken.  If  years 
before  he  had  spoken  in  the  distant  East,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  a  circle  far  removed  from  their  own,  of  God's 
love  "  to  the  poor,  the  humble  classes,  the  neglected 
classes,  the  dangerous  classes,  the  friendless,  the  op- 
pressed, the  unthought  for,  the  uncared  for  ; "  if  he 


130  RECOLLECTION S  OF  [CHAP.  m. 

had  pleaded  for  Christianity  "as  the  only  religion 
addressed,  not  to  the  religious,  but  to  the  irreligious, 
the  non-religious,"  his  friends  know  well  that  this  was 
no  rhetorical  utterance  of  idle  breath,  but  a  deep  con- 
viction on  which  his  own  life  and  his  own  religion 
were  based  and  moulded. 

The  many  volumes  of  his  collected  works  will  have 
to  face  the  verdict  which  it  is  yet  too  early  to  pronounce 
as  to  their  enduring  character.  His  theological  position 
may  be  questioned,  challenged,  attacked,  and  defend- 
ed; it  may  be  maintained  or  abandoned  by  those  who 
survive  him.  But  those  who  have  had  the  privilege — 
the  inestimable  privilege  —  of  enjoying  his  society  or 
of  sharing  his  friendship,  will  feel  that  behind  the 
genius  and  behind  the  theology  there  was  something 
more  precious,  more  attractive,  more  inspiring  than 
either;  the  man  himself — the  Arthur  Stanley — who 
in  youth,  in  manhood,  in  maturer  age,  drew  to  him 
more  and  more  the  hearts  of  men,  and  has  made  the 
skies  seem  less  bright,  earth  less  habitable,  life  itself 
less  interesting  since  he  ceased  to  be. 

I  would  gladly  end  with  these  words :  but  some- 
thing I  ought  to  say  of  his  domestic,  his  personal 
history.  You  will  not  expect  me  to  anticipate  his 
biography  by  saying  much. 

His  life  was  exceedingly  busy  and  laborious.  He 
speaks  frequently  in  letters  written  on  his  first  coming 
to  London  of  "the  terrible  whirl,"  of  "my  time  being 
broken  to  pieces  in  useless,  trivial  labour."  His  suc- 
cessor can  enter  into  his  dismay.  Yet  the  amount  of 


CHAP,  m.]      ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  131 

work  —  work  of  the  most  various  kinds  —  which  he 
contrived  to  do  seems  almost  incredible.  And  he  did 
it  in  the  main  joyously.  No  controversialist's  abuse 
ever  seemed  to  ruffle  him  for  a  moment ;  the  fiercest 
invectives  left  no  sting  behind.  His  health,  without 
being  strong,  was  good,  and  his  autumnal  tours  in 
Scotland,  or  on  the  Continent,  he  enjoyed  to  the  last 
with  indefatigable  activity.  The  loss  of  friends  he  felt 
sorely.  Kingsley's  death  struck  him  to  the  ground.  So 
wide  was  his  circle  that  such  blows  came  often  as  life 
went  on.  "I  am  thankful  now,"  he  said,  "if  a  month 
passes  without  a  death!"  Yet  he  had  wonderful  elas- 
ticity and  a  hopeful  temperament.  I  remember  his 
telling  us  how,  near  the  time  of  his  sixtieth  birthday, 
a  little  German  boy  with  whom,  with  his  usual  love  of 
children,  he  had  made  acquaintance  (I  think  it  was  on  a 
Rhine  steamer),  asked  him  his  age;  on  hearing  it,  he 
said,  "Why,  all  your  life  is  over!"  "No,"  he  replied, 
"the  best  time  is  yet  to  come."  He  took  a  keen  inter- 
est in  public  affairs,  and  was  deeply  moved  by  the  war 
between  France  and  Germany.  His  letters  express 
the  strongest  indignation  against  the  French  Emperor 
as  the  wanton  disturber  of  the  peace  of  Europe.  But 
the  bombardment  of  Strasburg  and  the  siege  of  Paris 
were  to  him  "  dreadful  calamities,  even  if  needed  to 
secure  the  world  against  the  recurrence  of  such  evils." 
And  in  his  sermon  on  the  Distress  of  Paris  you  will 
find  the  most  moving  of  laments  over  the  city  which 
he  knew  so  well.  But  I  must  hasten  on. 

It  was  after  his  visit  to  Russia  in  1874  that  his  wife's 


132  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  ni. 

health  began  to  show  signs  of  failure,  and  that  sadness 
began  to  darken  that  once  bright  home  in  the  Deanery. 
In  the  next  year  it  was  necessary  to  pass  the  spring  and 
summer  in  seclusion,  and  to  forego  their  usual  visit  to 
Scotland.  He  writes  of  his  "  suffering  wife  and  her 
widowed  sister  as  cheering  each  other  and  cheering 
me."  "  I  resign  myself,"  he  says,  "  to  six  months  of 
this  stranded  existence.  If  at  the  end  of  that  time 
my  dear  wife  is  anything  like  what  she  was  before  in 
activity  and  strength,  I  shall  be  satisfied.  Like  what 
she  was  in  wisdom  and  goodness  she  is  and  has  been 
throughout,  and  will  be,  I  have  no  doubt,  to  the  end." 
(To  M.  M.,  Feb.  8,  1875.)  He  spent  the  autumn  at 
Norwood  near  London,  busying  himself,  seated  by  her 
couch-side,  at  his  third  volume  of  the  Jewish  Church, 
in  alternations  of  hope  and  despondency.  He  returned 
to  London  in  October.  But  the  months  went  by,  and 
no  change  for  the  better  came.  "  I  know  not,"  he 
writes  to  the  same  friend,  "  what  report  to  give.  So  very 
weak,  so  suffering,  and  yet  such  unconquerable  cheer- 
fulness and  vivacity."  And  he  speaks  of  the  invaluable 
presence  of  her  cousin,  that  most  faithful  of  friends, 
who  is  even  now  devoting  herself  to  the  sacred  task 
of  deciphering  and  arranging  a  vast  mass  of  his  letters, 
papers,  and  journals.  "  All  the  world  is  changed  for 
me,"  he  adds;  "yet  I  find  it  best,  and  she  also  desired, 
that  I  should  fill  up  the  time,  not  filled  by  my  thoughts 
and  works  for  her,  with  work  of  my  own,  and  so  I 
struggled  on."  And  through  that  sad  winter,  ever  ready 
to  forget  his  own  trouble  if  he  could  aid  a  friend  or 


CHAP,  m.]      ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  133 

further  any  good  cause,  he  worked  day  by  day  at  that 
concluding  volume.  By  February  she  could  only  just 
rouse  herself  to  express  her  joy  that  her  husband  and 
Oxford  were  not  to  lose  the  presence  of  so  dear  a 
friend  as  Professor  Max  Miiller.  Still  he  worked  on 
by  her  side,  placing,  when  speech  had  failed  her, 
some  simple  hymn,  some  Christian  text,  within  her 
sight.  "Last  night,"  he  writes  at  last  to  his  old  pupil 
and  present  successor,  "she  pronounced  my  name 
for  the  last  time ;  this  morning,  for  the  last  time,  in 
answer  to  my  urgent  appeal,  she  opened  those  dear 
eyes  upon  me."  On  the  1st  of  March  she  passed  away. 
The  last  visitor  to  look  upon  her  as  she  lay  in  the  calm 
of  unconscious  slumber  was  the  Sovereign's  youngest 
son,  the  young  Prince  dear  to  Scotland  for  other 
reasons  than  the  Scottish  title  that  he  bears,  whose 
recovery  from  dangerous  illness  twelve  months  before 
he  had  made  the  subject  of  some  touching  lines, 
under  the  title  of  "  The  Untravelled  Traveller,"  which 
some  here  may  have  read.*  It  was  Ash-Wednesday 
—  the  same  day  of  the  ecclesiastical  year  as  that  on 
which  he  had  lost  his  mother  fourteen  years  before. 
Something  of  his  feelings  towards  both  he  embodied 
in  stanzas  of  characteristic  and  mournful  beauty  to 
which  I  have  already  referred.f 

He  was,  indeed,  "  in  the  very  ashes  and  embers." 
Yet  the  sympathy  of  his  friends,  the  letters  that  poured 
in  upon  him  from  every  quarter  of  the  world,  cheered 
him  greatly.  "The  knowledge,"  he  wrote  once  more, 

»  Macmillan's  Magazine,  March  1875.          t  See  note  to  page  89. 


134  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  in. 

"that  my  friends,  my  dear  unfailing  friends,  knew  what 
she  was  and  is,  must  be  my  enduring  solace."  "  Do 
not  pity  me  for  Thursday  "  (the  day  fixed  for  the 
funeral).  "  What  could  be  more  sustaining  and  in- 
spiring than  such  a  tribute  rendered  to  the  life  of  my 
life,  the  heart  of  my  heart  ?  "  Some  here  may  possibly 
have  been  present  at  that  vast  gathering — second  only 
in  impressiveness  to  another  that  we  have  since  seen 
moving  towards  the  same  tomb — which  walked  behind 
him  to  her  grave.  How  anxiously,  during  the  long  roll 
of  a  music  into  whose  secrets  he  could  not  enter,  men 
watched  his  face  as  he  stood  sustained  and  calm  behind 
the  coffin.  With  what  courage,  what  almost  majesty, 
he  himself,  before  he  returned  to  his  darkened  home, 
dismissed  with  the  final  blessing  that  vast  multitude, 
awed,  thrilled,  and  touched  by  the  strange  power  and 
resonance  of  that  unfaltering  voice — a  multitude  that 
included  every  class,  from  the  Queen  who  loved  her 
to  the  poor  workers  for  their  daily  bread  whose  lives 
she  had  helped  to  cheer. 

But  the  blow  had  been  struck  from  which  he  was 
never  wholly  to  recover.  He  often  loved  to  speak  of 
lives  which  great  affliction  had  strengthened  and  ele- 
vated. He  would  point  with  admiration  to  that  sorely- 
tried  friend  the  Primate  of  England,  who  had  gathered 
strength  and  renewed  usefulness  from  crushing  sorrows. 
There  is  an  exquisite  passage  in  one  of  his  latest  ser- 
mons in  which,  after  speaking  of  "the  blank  desolation 
of  sorrow  with  which  we  look  on  the  lonely  work  that 
lies  before  us  when  the  voice  that  cheered  us  is  silent, 


CHAP,  m.]      ARTHUR  PENRHTN  STANLEY.  135 

and  the  hand  that  upheld  us  is  cold  in  the  grave,"  he 
speaks  also  of  "the  cloud  of  blessing  that  comes  out  of 
that  tender  memory,  and  of  the  feeling  that  the  very 
solitude  in  which  we  are  left  calls  for  new  energies." 
Two  months  after  his  bereavement  he  laments  that 
it  is  not  so  with  himself.  "  Sorrow  has  not  yet  brought," 
he  writes,  "  strength  and  energy.  I  still  hope  that  it 
will."  And  his  hope  was  not  wholly  iA  vain.  Care  was 
taken  that  his  home  should  be  never  wholly  desolate. 
He  lived,  as  you  know,  for  five  years  longer.  Old 
friends  rallied  round  him ;  new  friendships  were  still  to 
be  formed.  One  who  for  those  last  few  years  saw  him 
almost  daily,  and  who  repaid  his  warm  affection  by 
a  devoted  and  almost  filial  attachment,  had  never 
known  him  in  his  married  life.  He  recovered  his  full 
interest  in  public  events,  in  the  questions  which  agi- 
tated the  Church.  He  worked  on  at  the  same  desk  in 
the  library,  with  his  wife's  bust  hard  by  on  the  table 
by  which  she  had  sat.  Much  of  his  old  elasticity  and 
vivacity  returned ;  his  keen  sense  of  humour  never  left 
him.  He  was  as  ready  as  ever  to  take  the  field  in 
defence  of  any  victim  of  theological  prejudice  or  ran- 
cour. His  interest  in  his  humbler  fellow-countrymen 
grew  deeper  and  wider.  There  lies  before  me  at  this 
moment  a  letter  from  one  of  the  mourners  who  filled  the 
Abbey  at  his  funeral.  It  is  written  by  a  London  lighter- 
man, i.e.,  a  navigator  of  barges  on  the  Thames,  whom 
he  had  accidentally  encountered  in  front  of  the  monu- 
ment to  John  Wesley  on  the  Easter  Monday  of  the 
year  before  he  died.  Their  chance  conversation  had  led 


136  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  m. 

to  two  or  three  friendly  visits  paid  by  invitation  to  the 
Deanery.  The  humbler  friend  recalls  not  only  his  own 
remark,  in  reference  to  the  Dean's  visits  to  Palestine, 
that  it  must  "  have  been  beautiful  to  have  been  able 
to  walk  where  the  Saviour  had  walked,"  but  the 
answer  and  "  the  heavenly  look  "  that  came  with  it, 
"  Yes,  beautiful  to  walk  in  the  steps  of  the  Saviour." 
And  his  visitor  and  others  like  him  learned  to  look  on 
him  with  the  same  love  that  we  his  old  familiar  friends 
bore  to  him.  Of  work  he  had  no  lack,  and  he  never 
rested  from  work  except  in  such  rest  as  travel  brought 
him.  He  seemed  to  find  a  new  lease  of  life,  for  a  time 
at  least,  in  his  visit  made  to  America  with  two  dear 
friends  in  1878.  There  he  renewed  many  friendships, 
formed  fresh  ties,  and  drank  in  with  delight  the  throng 
of  new  ideas  which  pressed  upon  him  in  his  first  visit 
to  that  untrodden  region.  If  the  volume  of  "Ad- 
dresses and  Sermons  in  America  "  were  the  only  relic 
left  of  his  literary  labours,  if  all  else  from  the  Biog- 
raphy of  Arnold  to  the  "  Christian  Institutions " 
were  swept  away,  you  might  find  in  that  one  volume 
almost  everything  characteristic  of  the  man,  and 
some  gems  of  a  kind  not  to  be  found  in  his  earlier 
writings.  To  these  I  have  referred  elsewhere. 

At  the  meeting  which  was  held  to  take  steps  to 
commemorate  him  in  the  Chapter  House  of  West- 
minster, the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  told  a  touch- 
ing story  of  a  poor  old  widow  at  Lambeth  whose 
face  brightened  up  on  hearing  his  name.  "  Frail  and 
trembling,"  she  said,  "  I  was  trying  to  make  my  way 


CHAP,  m.]      ARTHUR  PENRHFN  STANLEY.  137 

across  Westminster  Bridge  among  the  carriages,  and 
afraid  that  I  should  be  trodden  down,  when  a  man 
stepped  up  to  me  and  gave  me  his  help,  and  piloted 
me  safely  through  the  crowd.  I  asked  him  to  whom 
I  was  indebted ;  he  merely  pointed  to  the  great  Ab- 
bey, '  You  know  that  place,'  he  said ;  '  I  am  its  Dean.' " 

Let  me  add  another  characteristic  anecdote.  In  his 
absence  from  home  for  some  weeks,  a  much  respected 
servant  of  the  Abbey,  a  man  of  humble  position,  but 
rich  in  health  and  strength,  and  vigour  and  stature, 
had  become  permanently  and  hopelessly  blind.  My 
informant,  his  one  surviving  sister  —  none  but  herself 
could  have  told  the  tale  so  touchingly  —  found  him 
seated  by  the  side  of  the  blind  man,  his  own  eyes 
streaming  with  tears,  which  he  whom  he  was  trying  to 
comfort  could  not  see,  endeavouring  by  every  possible 
word  and  topic  to  inspire  hope  and  courage  into  the 
heart  of  one  who  was  visited  with  what  would  have 
been  to  himself  the  most  terrible  of  afflictions.  No 
wonder  that  the  sufferer  found  his  burden  lightened 
by  the  aid  of  such  a  friend,  and  was  encouraged  to 
take  the  first  and  hardest  steps  towards  leading,  in 
spite  of  that  great  loss,  a  cheerful  and  useful  life. 

From  America  he  returned  to  his  work  refreshed  and 
strengthened  for  a  time.  But  there  was  a  sense  among 
those  who  knew  him  best  that  his  hold  on  life  was 
slackening.  Yet  his  busy  brain  never  rested,  nor  did 
the  warm  heart  grow  cold.  It  was  only  shortly  before 
his  death  that  he  published  the  volume  on  Christian 
Institutions,"  which  embodies  his  latest  views  on  the 


138  RECOLLECTIONS   OF  [CHAP.  in. 

whole  field  of  Theology.  The  exquisite  lines  on  "  Death 
the  Reuniter,"  were  written  not  long  before  death  did 
its  kindly  work.  His  sermon  on  Thomas  Carlyle  was 
preached  in  the  February  before  the  preacher  died ; 
that  on  Lord  Beaconsfield  so  late  as  the  1st  of  May. 
Within  a  few  weeks  of  the  end  he  wrote  for  The  Times 
a  paper  which  appeared  after  his  death  on  the  revised 
version  of  the  New  Testament ;  an  article  on  the 
Westminster  Confession  he  corrected  for  the  Press, 
on  what  proved  to  be  his  death-bed.  In  the  year 
but  one  before  he  died  he  had  greatly  enjoyed  a  visit 
to  Northern  Italy  and  Venice  in  company  with  his 
sister,  Mary  Stanley,  and  a  young  London  physician, 
whom  he  greatly  loved,  and  who  had  been  one  of  his 
two  companions  in  America.  It  was  followed,  in  No- 
vember, by  that  sister's  death,  coming,  if  it  must  needs 
have  come,  even  as  they  would  both  have  wished  it, 
yet  for  all  that  a  sore  trial.  The  last  but  one  gone  of 
that  bright  circle !  Father,  mother,  brothers,  sister, 
gone  before  him ! 

Shall  I  remind  you  of  the  one  storm  of  popular, 
as  opposed  to  clerical,  opposition  that  he  ever  en- 
countered ?  His  own  words  will  recall  it.  "  When," 
he  said,  "I  assented  to  a  monument  in  the  Abbey 
to  the  Prince  Imperial,  I  expected,  after  the  sym- 
pathy shewn  at  the  time  of  the  funeral  at  Chisle- 
hurst,  nothing  but  universal  approval.  I  did  it  with- 
out consulting  or  hearing  from  any  one,  and  I  still 
believe  that  a  few  years  hence  it  would  have  been 
amongst  the  most  generally  interesting  and  attractive 


CHAP,  in.]      ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.  139 

of  the  Abbey  monuments."  Yet  he  was  no  Napoleon- 
ist,  and  had  little  sympathy  for  either  the  First  or 
the  Second  Empire.  His  intended  inscription  for  the 
proposed  monument,  was  the  untranslatable  line  of 
Virgil,  — 

"  Sunt  lacrimae  rerum  et  mentem  mortalia  tangunt." 

He  asked  a  friend  to  suggest  a  corresponding  English 
quotation.  He  demurred  to  Wordsworth's  lines, 

"  Men  are  we,  and  must  grieve  when  e'en  the  shade 
Of  that  which  once  was  great  has  passed  away," 

as  expressing  a  certain  excess  of  homage  to  what  had 
fallen,  and  seemed  more  ready  to  acquiesce  in  the 
vaguer  words  of  the  same  poet, 

"  Yet  tears  to  human  sufferings  are  due." 

The  result  of  a  debate  in  the  House  of  Commons 
seemed  to  him  sufficient  grounds  for  abandoning  the 
projected  memorial ;  but  he  never  changed  his  opin- 
ion, or  was  for  a  moment  dismayed  by  the  storm  that 
arose.  "  He  feared  no  man's  displeasure." 

Let  me  hasten  onwards.  In  the  year  before  his 
death,  his  friends  had  been  made  uneasy  by  occasional 
failures  in  strength ;  but  he  seemed  in  the  last  few 
months  to  have  recovered  in  no  small  degree  his  wonted 
tone,  and  preached,  if  often  with  less  than  the  usual 
vigour,  yet  at  times  with  all  his  old  force  and  fire.  But 
the  lamp  of  life  was  burning  low.  "  I  shall  never  go 
again,"  he  said,  after  his  return  from  the  triennial 
dinner  of  Old  Rugbeians ;  "  I  do  not  mean  that  I  shall 
not  live,  but  I  feel  that  I  am  losing  interest  in  these 


140  RECOLLECTIONS  OF  [CHAP.  m. 

special  and  youthful  meetings."  Something  of  the  same 
kind  he  had  whispered  on  his  last  return  from  Oxford. 
This  was  within  a  fortnight  of  the  commencement  of 
his  last  illness.  The  next  day,  however,  he  shewed  the 
keenest  interest  in  an  account  given  him  by  a  young 
Scottish  friend  of  the  feelings  and  language  of  a  London 
mob  who  were  met  together  in  support  of  Mr.  Brad- 
laugh.  So  anxious  was  he  to  the  very  last — it  was  the 
last  time  I  saw  him — to  find,  if  possible,  some  germ  of 
good  in  what  most  revolted  the  educated  and  religious 
classes.  A  few  days  later  he  attended  for  some  hours 
the  annual  gathering  within  the  Abbey  precincts  of  the 
Westminster  Window  Garden  Exhibition,  presided 
over  by  the  venerable  Lord  Shaftesbury,  a  meeting  in 
which  he  had  for  many  years  taken  the  deepest  inter- 
est. 

But  the  end  was  at  hand.  On  the  following  Sat- 
urday he  closed  the  afternoon  service  with  a  short 
sermon,  one  of  a  course  which  he  was  delivering 
weekly  on  the  Beatitudes.  Before  the  Psalms  of  the 
day  were  ended  he  had  left  the  Abbey,  feeling  ill ; 
he  returned  exhausted  with  violent  sickness,  and 
preached  his  last  sermon  with  an  effort  which  few 
but  himself  would  have  faced.  For  the  first  time  in 
his  life  at  Westminster  he  was  compelled  to  disap- 
point a  party  —  I  believe  of  young  sailors  —  who 
were  expecting  his  guidance  round  the  Abbey. 

He  retired  to  bed  on  his  return  to  the  Deanery,  and 
except  for  a  short  time  on  the  following  Wednesday 
never  left  it  till,  after  two  or  three  days  of  graver  ill- 


CHAP,  m.]      ARTHUR  PENEHYN  STANLEY.  141 

ness,  lie  passed  away  towards  midnight  on  Monday, 
the  18th  of  July. 

You  will  not  ask  me  to  enter  further  into  these  sad 
details.  Some  of  those  closest  and  dearest  to  him 
were  far  away,  unaware  of  his  danger  till  all  was  over. 
But  his  dear  friend,  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
came  to  his  bedside,  and  took  from  him,  before  he  left, 
his  dying  words ;  his  one  remaining  sister  and  her 
husband,  his  wife's  sister,  his  two  fellow-travellers 
in  America, — both  exceedingly  dear  to  him, — and  his 
friend  and  neighbour  Canon  Farrar,  were  with  him  to 
the  end,  and  all  received,  before  utterance  failed  him, 
his  parting  blessing. 

Shall  I  do  wrong  in  passing  from  that  solemn  scene 
to  language  used  not  long  before  by  himself,  when 
speaking  of  the  wrestling  of  Jacob  with  his  mysterious 
visitor  as  the  likeness  and  type  of  all  spiritual  struggles  ? 
"  It  describes  also  the  last  struggle  of  all,  it  may  be  in 
the  extreme  of  age  or  of  weakness,  in  the  Valley  of  the 
Shadow  of  Death.  There  the  soul  finds  itself  alone  on 
the  mountain  ridge  overlooking  the  unknown  future ; 
'  our  company  before  is  gone,'  the  kinsfolk  and  friends 
of  many  years  are  passed  over  the  dark  river,  and  we 
are  left  alone  with  God.  We  know  not  in  the  shadow 
of  the  night  who  it  is  that  touches  us  —  we  feel  only 
that  the  Everlasting  arms  are  closing  us  in;  the 
twilight  of  the  morning  breaks,  we  are  bid  to  depart 
in  peace,  for  by  a  strength  not  our  own  we  have  pre- 
vailed, and  the  path  is  made  clear  before  us." 

Let  me  only  add  the  closing  lines  of  the  same  paper, 


142  ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY.      [CHAP.  in. 

"  When  the  struggle  is  drawing  to  its  end,  when  the 
day  breaks  and  the  sun  rises,  there  will  have  been  some 
who  in  that  struggle  have  seen  the  Face  of  God." 

To  him  the  night  was  past,  and  the  daybreak  had 
dawned. 


AUTHORIZED    AMERICAN    EDITION. 


QfpisMan  Institutions : 

ESSAYS    ON   ECCLESIASTICAL    SUBJECTS. 
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Men  and  Books; 

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